Paramilitaries’ Heirs

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Government must Protect Civilians, Prosecute Groups’ Members and Accomplices

Glossary

AUC: Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,United
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a coalition of 37 paramilitary groups in
Colombia that officially demobilized by 2006.

Colombian
National Police, Division of Carabineers: Dirección de Carabineros de la Policía
Nacional de Colombia, a division of the National Police that operates in rural
regions and is tasked with confronting successor groups, as well as with
providing security for eradication of illicit crops.

MAPP/OAS:
Organization of
American States’ Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia, a
mission established in 2004 as part of an agreement between the Organization of
American States and the Colombian government to monitor and verify the
demobilization of the AUC paramilitary groups.

Office of
the Attorney General of Colombia: Fiscalía General de la Nación, a Colombian
state entity charged with conducting most criminal investigations and
prosecutions. The Office of the Attorney General is formally independent of the
executive branch of the government.

Office of
the Inspector General of Colombia: Procuraduría General de la Nación, a Colombian
state entity charged with representing the interests of citizens before the
rest of the state. The office conducts most disciplinary investigations of
public officials and monitors criminal investigations and prosecutions, as well
as other state agencies’ actions.

Early
Warning System of the Office of the Ombudsman of Colombia: Sistema de Alertas Tempranas de la
Defensoría del Pueblo de Colombia. The Ombudsman’s Office (or
Defensoría) is a Colombian state entity charged with promoting and defending
human rights and international humanitarian law. The Early Warning System is a
subdivision of the Ombudsman’s Office, charged with monitoring risks to
civilians in connection with the armed conflict, and promoting actions to
prevent abuses.

Permanent Human Rights Unit of the Personería of Medellín: Unidad Permanente de
Derechos Humanos de la Personería de Medellín. The Personería is a municipal
entity that is also an agent of the Public Ministry, and is charged with
monitoring human rights and citizens’ rights in the city of Medellín. The Medellín Personería’s Permanent
Human Rights Unit is a division of the Personería specifically charged with
monitoring and protecting human rights in the city.

Presidential
Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation (Social Action): Agencia Presidencial para la
Acción Social y la Cooperación Internacional (Acción
Social), a Colombian state entity that is charged with administering national
and international resources for the execution of social programs for vulnerable
populations under the authority of the Presidency of Colombia. Among other
functions, Social Action oversees the registration of and assistance to
internally displaced persons.

Map of Colombia

I. Summary and Recommendations

Between 2003 and 2006 the Colombian government implemented a
demobilization process for 37 armed groups that made up the brutal, mafia-like,
paramilitary coalition known as the AUC (the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia,
or United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia). The government claimed success, as
more than 30,000 persons went through demobilization ceremonies, pledged to
cease criminal activity, and entered reintegration programs offering them
training, work, and stipends. Since then, the government has repeatedly said
that the paramilitaries no longer exist.

But almost immediately after the demobilization process had
ended, new groups cropped up all over the country, taking the reins of the
criminal operations that the AUC leadership previously ran.

Today, these successor groups are quietly having a dramatic
effect on the human rights and humanitarian situation in Colombia. Of
particular concern, as documented extensively in this report, the successor
groups are engaging in widespread and serious abuses against civilians,
including massacres, killings, rapes, threats, and extortion. They have
repeatedly targeted human rights defenders, trade unionists, displaced persons
including Afro-Colombians who seek to recover their land, victims of the AUC
who are seeking justice, and community members who do not follow their orders.
The rise of the groups has coincided with a significant increase in the rates
of internal displacement around the country from 2004 through at least 2007.
And in some regions, like the city of Medellín, where the homicide rate
has nearly doubled in the past year, the groups’ operations have resulted
in a large increase in violence. To many civilians, the AUC’s
demobilization has done little to change the conditions of fear and violence in
which they live.

The threat posed by the successor groups is both serious and
steadily growing. Colombia’s National Police estimates that they have
more than 4,000 members. Non-governmental estimates run as high as 10,200.
According to conservative police figures, the groups are quickly increasing
their areas of operation and as of July 2009 had a presence in at least 173
municipalities in 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments. They are actively
recruiting new members from among teenagers, demobilized individuals, and young
men and women. In several cases, they have been known to recruit members from
distant regions of the country, displaying a high level of organization at a
national level. Increasingly, the successor groups have merged or have absorbed
one another, so that fewer groups are operating in a more coordinated manner,
covering a larger territory.

The police speak of eight major groups: the Urabeños,
the Rastrojos, ERPAC, the Paisas, the Machos, New Generation, the group from
the Magdalena Medio, and Renacer. Human Rights Watch also received credible
reports of the existence of other groups, such as the Black Eagles in
Nariño, which the police did not include in their list at the time.

A serious cause for concern is the fact that many
eyewitnesses with whom we spoke reported that members of the security forces were
tolerating successor groups’ activities in various regions.

The Colombian government and some analysts label the
successor groups as “emerging criminal gangs at the service of drug
trafficking” (bandas criminales emergentes or BACRIM), insisting
that the successor groups are something new and very different from the
paramilitaries. Other experts and many residents view them as a continuation of
the AUC, or a new generation of paramilitaries.

Regardless of how the successor groups are categorized, the
fact is that today they are frequently targeting civilians, committing horrific
crimes including massacres, killings, rapes, and forced displacement. And the
state has an obligation to protect the civilian population, to prevent abuses,
and to hold perpetrators accountable.

Unfortunately, the government has yet to take strong and
effective measures to fulfill these obligations. It has failed to invest adequate
resources in the police units charged with combating the groups, or in the
group of prosecutors charged with investigating them. It has done far too
little to investigate regular reports of toleration of the successor groups by
state agents or public security forces. And it has yet to take adequate measures
to protect civilians from this new threat. Instead, the government has dragged
its feet on funding for the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman’s
Office, which plays a key role in protecting the civilian population, and state
agencies have at times denied assistance to civilians who reported being
displaced by successor groups.

This report addresses three main issues. First, it documents
the extent to which the emergence of the successor groups is related to the
government’s failure to effectively demobilize many AUC leaders and
fighters. Second, it describes the groups’ frequent and brutal abuses
against civilians, highlighting common patterns of behavior with particular
attention to four regions where the groups have a substantial presence: the city
of Medellín, the Urabá region of Chocó state, and the
states of Meta and Nariño. Third, the report points out continuing
shortcomings in the government’s response to the groups’ operations
and abuses.

The report is based on nearly two years of field research in
Colombia. Human Rights Watch conducted dozens of interviews with victims,
demobilized paramilitaries, local and national law enforcement authorities and
state agencies, members of the public security forces, and non-governmental
organizations in the following regions: Sincelejo (Sucre); Barranquilla
(Atlántico); Pasto and Tumaco (Nariño); Cúcuta (Norte de
Santander); Barrancabermeja and Bucaramanga (Santander); Medellín
(Antioquia); Villavicencio, Granada, Vistahermosa, and Puerto Rico (Meta); the humanitarian
zones of Curvaradó and Andalucía (Chocó); and the capital,
Bogotá.

The Successor Groups: A Predictable Outcome of a
Flawed Demobilization

While there are differences between the AUC and its
successors, the successor groups are in several respects a continuation of some
of the AUC’s paramilitary “blocks” or groups. As reported by
the police, a majority of the leaders of the successor groups are mid-level AUC
commanders who never demobilized or continued engaging in criminal activity
despite ostensibly having demobilized. The groups are active in many of the
same regions where the AUC had a presence, and operate in similar ways to the
AUC: controlling territory through threats and extortion, engaging in drug
trafficking and other criminal activity, and committing widespread abuses
against civilians.

The emergence of the successor groups was predictable, in
large part due to the Colombian government’s failure to dismantle the
AUC’s criminal networks and financial and political support structures during
the demobilizations.

The demobilization process suffered from serious flaws,
which Human Rights Watch documented extensively and reported on at the time.
One problem is that the government failed to verify whether those who
demobilized were really paramilitaries, and whether all paramilitaries in fact
demobilized. As a result, in some cases paramilitary groups were able to engage
in fraud, recruiting civilians to pose as paramilitaries to demobilize, while
keeping a core segment of their groups active. This is particularly clear in
the case of the Northern Block demobilization, in which there is substantial
evidence of outright fraud. There are also signs of fraud in the
demobilizations of groups in Medellín and Nariño.

But perhaps a more serious problem was the fact that the
government failed to take advantage of the process to thoroughly question
demobilizing paramilitaries about their knowledge of the groups’ assets,
contacts, and criminal operations, to investigate the groups’ criminal
networks and sources of support, and to take them apart. Thus, for example,
even though Freddy Rendón, the commander of the Elmer Cárdenas
block of the AUC, demobilized, his brother Daniel quickly filled Freddy’s
shoes, continuing the block’s drug trafficking, extortion, protection of
illegally taken lands held by people associated with the paramilitaries, and
its harassment of civilians in the Urabá region.

With some exceptions, prosecutors have failed to thoroughly
investigate the AUC’s complex criminal operations, financing sources, and
networks of support. Thus, successor groups have been able to easily fill the
AUC’s shoes, using the massive resources they already had or could
readily obtain through crime to recruit new members and continue controlling and
abusing the civilian population.

The Human Rights and Humanitarian Impact of the
Successor Groups

The successor groups are engaged in widespread and serious
abuses against civilians in much of the country. They massacre, kill, rape,
torture, and forcibly “disappear” persons who do not follow their
orders. They regularly use threats and extortion against members of the
communities where they operate, as a way to exert control over local
populations. They frequently threaten, and sometimes attack, human rights defenders,
trade unionists, journalists, and victims of the AUC who press claims for
justice or restitution of land.

For example, one human rights defender described how, while
she was providing assistance to a victim of the AUC at the victim’s home,
members of a successor group calling themselves the Black Eagles broke into the
house, raped both women, and warned her to stop doing human rights work.
“They told me it was forbidden for me to do that in the municipality.
They didn’t want victims to know their rights or report abuses,”
she told us.[1]
When she continued her work, they kidnapped her and said that if she did not
leave town, they would go after her family. She sought help from local
authorities, who dismissed her saying she should have known better than to do
human rights work, and so she eventually fled and went into hiding.

Similarly, Juan David Díaz, a doctor who leads the
local Sincelejo chapter of the Movement of Victims of State Crimes, a
non-governmental organization, has reported threats and attempts on his life by
successor groups. Juan David has been pressing for justice for the murder of
his father, Tito Diaz, a mayor who was killed by the AUC, with the
collaboration of a former state governor (who was recently convicted).

Trade unionists, a frequent target of the AUC, are now
targeted by successor groups. According to the National Labor School, the
leading organization monitoring labor rights in Colombia, in 2008 trade
unionists reported receiving 498 threats (against 405 trade unionists). Of
those, 265 are listed as having come from the successor groups, while 220 came
from unidentified actors.[2]

The successor groups are also forcibly displacing large
numbers of civilians from their homes. Forced displacement by these groups
likely has contributed to a substantial rise in internal displacement
nationwide after 2004. According to official figures, after dropping to 228,828
in 2004, the number of newly displaced persons went up each year until it hit
327,624 in 2007. The official 2008 numbers are a little lower, at 300,693, but
still substantially higher than at the start of the demobilization process.[3]
The non-governmental organization Consultoria para los Derechos Humanos y el
Desplazamiento (CODHES) reports different numbers, finding that around 380,863
people were displaced in 2008—a 24.47 percent increase over its number
(305,966) for 2007.[4]

In fact, much of the displacement is occurring in regions
where successor groups are active. CODHES says there were 82 cases of group
displacement in 2008; the most affected departments were Nariño and
Chocó, where the successor groups are very active.[5] Human
Rights Watch spoke to dozens of victims who said they had been displaced by
successor groups in Nariño, Medellín, the Urabá region,
and along the Atlantic Coast.

Without exception, in each of the four major regions Human
Rights Watch visited and examined closely for this report, the successor groups
were committing serious abuses against civilians.

For example, inMedellín, successor groups
(often made up of demobilized or non-demobilized AUC members) continued exerting
control in various neighborhoods through extortion, threats, beatings, and
targeted killings after the demobilization of the paramilitary blocks in the
city. Despite his supposed demobilization, AUC leader Diego Murillo Bejarano
(known as “Don Berna”), exerted what locals and many officials
described as a monopoly over crime and security in the city, contributing to a
significant but temporary reduction in homicides for a few years. But in the
words of one city resident, the people in the city at the time were
experiencing “peace with a gun to your throat.”[6]

Due to infighting in Don Berna’s group, as well as
competition with other successor groups trying to enter the city, the last two
years have seen a rapid rise in violence against civilians in Medellín. In the
first ten months of 2009 there were 1,717 homicides in the city—more than
doubling the 830 killings registered in Medellín for the same period in
2008. The groups have also caused a significant rise in internal displacement
in the city. In one case Human Rights Watch documented, more than 40 people
from the Pablo Escobar neighborhood of Medellín were forced to flee
their homes between late 2008 and early 2009 as a result of killings and
threats by the local armed group, which is partly made up of demobilized
individuals. The victims, who were hiding in a shelter in Medellín, described
living in a state of constant fear in the city: “We can no longer live in
Medellín. They have tentacles everywhere.”[7]

In the southern border state of Nariño, massacres,
killings, threats, and massive forced displacement of civilians occur on a
regular basis, though they are significantly underreported. The successor
groups in Nariño are responsible for a significant share of these
abuses. For example, between June and July of 2008, almost all residents in
three communities in the coastal municipality of Satinga were displaced after
one of the successor groups (then using the name Autodefensas Campesinas de
Nariño, or Peasant Self Defense Forces of Nariño) went into
one of the towns, killed two young men, and reportedly caused the forced
disappearance of a third.

A substantial portion of the Liberators of the South Block
of the AUC remained active in Nariño and, under the name “New
Generation,” violently took over important sectors of the Andean mountain
range shortly after the demobilizations. More recently, New Generation has lost
influence, but two other groups have gained in strength. Along most of
Nariño’s coastline, the Rastrojos and the Black Eagles are active
and frequently engage in acts of violence against civilians. Both groups are
reported to have a growing presence in the Andean mountain range. In our
interviews in the region, several residents, local officials, and international
observers described cases in which public security forces apparently tolerated
the Black Eagles.

As one man from the Andean town of Santa Cruz told Human
Rights Watch: “In Madrigal ... the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the
police 20 meters away... [Y]ou can’t trust the army or police because
they’re practically with the guys... In Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa we have
the Rastrojos. They arrived in March or April. They arrived ... in camouflaged
uniform. They’re a lot, 100, 150, 300—they’ve grown a lot...
They come in and tax the businessmen. It appears that they sometimes confront
guerrillas and other times the Black Eagles and New Generation.”[8]

Colombia’s Obligations

Regardless of their label (whether as armed groups,
paramilitaries or organized crime), the Colombian government bears specific
responsibilities to address the threat that they pose to the civilian
population. Those include obligations to protect civilians from harm, prevent
abuses, and ensure accountability for abuses when they occur.[9]The
level of state responsibility for the abuses of the successor groups will
increase depending on the extent to which state agents tolerate or actively
collaborate with these groups.

In addition, some of the successor groups could be
considered armed groups for the purposes of the laws of war (international
humanitarian law, IHL). Several successor groups appear to be highly organized
and to have a responsible command and control structure, and an involvement in
the conflict, such that they qualify as armed groups under IHL: for example,
ERPAC, which operates on in Meta, Vichada, and Guaviare, and, arguably, some of
the groups in Nariño, qualify.

Other groups, enjoying less
territorial control or less organization, or that are not aligned to the
conflict, may simply be “criminal organizations.” In relation to
such groups, however, the state still has a legal duty to take reasonable steps
to prevent the commission of human rights violations, to carry out serious
investigations of violations if committed, to identify those responsible, to
impose the appropriate punishment, and to ensure adequate compensation for
victims.

State Response

The government has assigned the Colombian National
Police’s Division of Carabineers the lead role in confronting the
successor groups.

Government policies stipulate that the military is to step
in to confront the successor groups only when the police formally request it,
or in situations where the military happens to encounter the groups and must
use force to protect the civilian population. But the Carabineers presently
appear to lack the capacity and resources to effectively pursue the successor
groups in all areas where the successor groups are engaging in abuses. In
several areas where the groups operate, the police have no presence. Yet the
military does not appear to be stepping in to fight the groups in those areas.
In at least one case, Human Rights Watch found that police and army officials
in the state of Meta each pointed to the other as the authority responsible for
combating the successor groups. The army cited the government policy assigning
responsibility to the police as a reason not to step in, and the local police
said they had no jurisdiction.

Another problem is the failure of the government to invest adequate
resources to ensure that members of the successor groups and their accomplices
are held accountable for their crimes. The Office of the Attorney General
created a specialized group of prosecutors in 2008 to handle cases involving
the successor groups. But the group is understaffed, and is able to focus only
on some of the successor groups.

One significant concern, raised by members of the police and
the Office of the Attorney General, is corruption and toleration of successor
groups by some state officials, which make it difficult to track down,
confront, and hold accountable the groups.

The most prominent example of such concerns involves the
current criminal investigation into allegations that the chief prosecutor of
Medellín, Guillermo Valencia Cossio (the brother of Colombia’s
minister of interior), collaborated extensively with successor groups. He has
denied the allegations. As detailed in this report, Human Rights Watch also
received reports in Nariño, Chocó, Medellín and Meta of
situations in which members of the police or army appeared to tolerate the
activities of successor groups.

With few exceptions, the government has failed to take
effective measures to identify, investigate, and punish state officials who
tolerate the successor groups. At times, public security forces appear to
respond to allegations that their members are tolerating the groups by simply
transferring the officials to other regions. The correct response would be to
inform prosecutors of the allegations and suspend the officials in question
while criminal investigations are conducted.

The state has also failed to take adequate measures to
prevent abuses by the successor groups and protect the civilian population.

The Ministry of Interior’s longstanding protection
program for human rights defenders, trade unionists, and journalists has
provided much-needed protection to vulnerable individuals. But it does not
cover victims of the AUC who are seeking justice, restitution of land, or
reparation under the Justice and Peace Law (a 2005 law allowing paramilitaries
responsible for atrocities and other serious crimes to receive dramatically
reduced sentences in exchange for their demobilization, confession, and return
of illegally acquired assets). The Constitutional Court has ordered that these
victims receive protection from the state and the government has since
implemented a decree providing for increased police security in regions
considered to present high risks for victims participating in the Justice and
Peace Law Process. Yet it remains unclear whether the program is effectively
covering all victims who need protection. These programs also do not cover
ordinary civilians in many regions who are continuously being threatened,
attacked, and displaced by the successor groups.

In several instances, Human Rights Watch received reports
that representatives of the Presidential Agency for Social Action and
International Cooperation (Social Action) were refusing to register and provide
assistance to internally displaced persons who reported that they were
displaced by paramilitaries, on the grounds that paramilitaries no longer
exist. While Social Action says that these cases do not reflect official
government policy, it must take effective action to ensure that such rejections
do not continue at a local level.

Finally, the Ombudsman’s Early Warning System (the
EWS), which constantly monitors the human rights situation in various regions
and regularly issues well-documented risk reports about the dangers facing
civilian populations, has played a key role in reporting on the successor
groups’ operations and likely abuses. But other state institutions that
should be acting on the EWS’s recommendations often ignore or downplay
them. The decision-making process on what actions to take based on the
EWS’s risk reports lacks transparency and, as recommended by the US
Agency for International Development, requires reform. The EWS has also
suffered due to government delays in providing necessary funding.

Recommendations

To the Government of Colombia

On the Demobilization of Paramilitary Blocks

In light of the evidence of significant fraud in the
demobilizations of some paramilitary blocks, and the failure of portions of the
blocks to demobilize, the government should:

Establish an ad-hoc independent commission
of inquiry to provide a public accounting of what happened during the
demobilizations, how many of the purportedly demobilized paramilitaries were
really combatants, to what extent paramilitaries remain active today, and to
what extent paramilitaries responsible for atrocities have evaded justice.

Conduct a systematic and coordinated effort to identify
land and illegal assets that paramilitaries or their accomplices may be
holding, and ensure their recovery and restitution to victims. Among other
steps, this will require adequately funding the Superintendence of
Notaries and Registry, so that it can increase collection of information
about land holdings and cross-reference it with displaced persons’
reports of land takings.

On Combating the Successor Groups

In light of the failure of government policies to prevent
the continued growth of the successor groups, the government should:

Ensure that the Carabineers unit of the police is
adequately funded and staffed to confront the successor groups.

Instruct the army that if its members observe or receive
reports of successor groups operating in regions under their jurisdiction,
they are to immediately inform the police and appropriate judicial
authorities so that they can respond. The instruction should make clear
that if the police have no presence in the area, the army should take
steps to confront and arrest the successor groups’ members.

Provide sufficient resources for the Office of the
Attorney General to increase the number of prosecutors and investigators
in its specialized group investigating successor groups.

On Alleged Toleration of Successor Groups by State Agents

In light of regular, credible allegations that state agents
and members of the public security forces are tolerating successor groups, and
the tendency of public security forces to address the allegations by simply
transferring their members to other regions, the government should:

Vigorously investigate and prosecute
officials who are credibly alleged to have collaborated with or tolerated the
successor groups.

Instruct the police and army that, when they
receive allegations of toleration of successor groups by their members, they
should immediately report such allegations to the Office of the Attorney
General for investigation and suspend the members against whom the allegations
were made while investigations are conducted.

On Protection of and Assistance to Victims and Civilians

In light of the failure of current government policies to
provide effective protection to victims of the AUC and civilians in regions
where the successor groups operate, the government should:

Put into operation an effective protection program for
victims and witnesses of paramilitary crimes, as required by the Colombian
Constitutional Court.

Provide sufficient funding for the Office of the Ombudsman
to expand and ensure the uninterrupted operation of the Early Warning
System.

As the US Agency for International Development’s
inspector general has recommended, reform the Inter-Institutional
Committee on Early Warnings to allow active participation by
representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office, to ensure publicity of
risk reports and transparency of the Committee’s decision-making,
and to ensure appropriate and timely responses to risk reports.

Issue directives to Social Action and other state agencies
providing that Social Action should register persons who are victims of
displacement by successor groups. Victims who refer to the perpetrators of
abuses against them as paramilitaries should not be denied assistance on
the grounds that paramilitaries no longer exist. The directive should
provide for disciplinary action against officials who disregard these
instructions.

To the Office of the Attorney General of Colombia

On the Demobilization of Paramilitary Blocks

In light of a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that forbids
pardons for crimes of “paramilitarism,” the Office of the
Attorney General should open investigations into and take advantage of the
opportunity to re-interview demobilized persons who did not receive
pardons, and to inquire in greater depth about their groups’
structure, crimes, accomplices, and assets, as well as about the
individual’s membership in the group.

Thoroughly interrogate participants in the Justice and Peace
Process about their groups’ financing streams, assets, and criminal
networks; dismantle those networks; and recover assets under the control
of the groups or their successors.

Thoroughly investigate and prosecute demobilized mid-level
commanders or others who had leadership roles in paramilitary groups and
who may have remained active, as well as all high-ranking military,
police, and intelligence officers, politicians, businessmen, or financial
backers, against whom there is evidence that they collaborated with
paramilitaries.

In light of the high rate of impunity in cases involving
forced displacement, substantially increase efforts to investigate and
prosecute allegations of forced displacement and land takings by
paramilitary groups and their successors.

On Investigation of Successor Group Abuses

Review the number and distribution of prosecutors and
investigators throughout Colombia to ensure that there are sufficient law
enforcement authorities available in regions where the successor groups
have a presence.

Strengthen the specialized group focused on investigating
the successor groups, by adding a sufficient number of prosecutors and
investigators, and providing sufficient resources and logistical support
to that group, so that it can effectively and systematically investigate
the major successor groups.

Instruct prosecutors to prioritize investigations of state
agents who have been credibly alleged to have tolerated or collaborated
with the successor groups.

To the United States

Provide specific assistance for logistical support,
equipment, and relevant training to the specialized group of prosecutors
investigating the successor groups. Training should cover not only
strategies for investigation and prosecution of the groups themselves, but
also of state agents who have allegedly cooperated with or tolerated the
groups.

Urge the Colombian government to expand the Early Warning
System of the Ombudsman’s Office, and to ensure that victims of
displacement by the successor groups receive the assistance to which they
are entitled.

Because the paramilitary leaders with the most information
about the groups’ criminal networks and financing sources were
extradited to the United States, the US Department of Justice should
instruct US prosecutors to create meaningful incentives for the extradited
paramilitary leaders to disclose information about their criminal networks
and links to the political system, military, and financial backers, as
well as about the successor groups. The United States should use that
information to prosecute all implicated persons that are within its
jurisdiction and when appropriate should share the information with
Colombian authorities to further prosecutions in Colombia.

Condition not only military but also police aid on
accountability for members of public security forces who collaborate with
successor groups.

Continue to delay ratification of the US-Colombia Free
Trade Agreement until Colombia’s government meets human rights pre-conditions,
including dismantling paramilitary structures and effectively confronting
the successor groups that now pose a serious threat to trade unionists.[10]

To all Donor Countries to Colombia

Press the Colombian government to expand the Early Warning
System of the Ombudsman’s Office, and to ensure that victims of
displacement by the successor groups receive the assistance to which they
are entitled.

Assist the Colombian justice system to put in place
investigative procedures and strategies to ensure accountability for state
agents who cooperate with the successor groups.

Condition any aid to public security forces on
accountability for members of public security forces who collaborate with
successor groups.

Delay consideration of free trade deals with Colombia
until the Colombian government meets human rights pre-conditions,
including dismantling paramilitary structures and effectively confronting
the successor groups that now pose a serious threat to trade unionists.

II. Methodology

Human Rights Watch staff have closely monitored the paramilitary
demobilization process in Colombia since it started in 2004, through trips
several times a year to different regions in the country where paramilitaries
operated and where demobilizations occurred, as well as interviews with
demobilized paramilitaries, national, state and local officials, members of the
public security forces, and victims of the AUC. The findings of this report are
in part based on this long-term monitoring of the demobilization process.

In addition, starting in February of 2008, Human Rights
Watch staff conducted intensive field research on the successor groups to the
AUC, visiting Sincelejo (Sucre) in February 2008; Pasto (Nariño) in
February and July 2008, and July 2009; Tumaco (Nariño) in September and
October 2008; Cúcuta (Norte de Santander) in September 2008;
Barrancabermeja and Bucaramanga (Santander) in September 2008; Villavicencio,
Granada, Vistahermosa, and Puerto Rico (Meta) in March 2009; the humanitarian
zones of Curvaradó and Andalucía (Chocó) in June 2009; and
the cities of Medellín and Bogotá, on multiple occasions in 2008
and 2009.

Human Rights Watch representatives carried out more than 100
interviews with victims of successor groups to the AUC. In most regions, Human
Rights Watch was also able to obtain meetings with local and sometimes national
authorities, members of the public security forces, non-governmental
organizations, and international organizations. In Barrancabermeja, Sincelejo,
Cúcuta, Medellín, and Pasto, Human Rights Watch also interviewed
individuals who had participated in the demobilization process. In
Bogotá, Human Rights Watch met with diplomats, journalists, experts on
Colombian security issues, and high-level government and law enforcement
officials who are responsible for addressing the issues discussed in the
report. Nearly all interviews were conducted in Spanish, the native language of
the interviewees (the sole exceptions are interviews with diplomats, foreign
journalists or foreign staff at international organizations).

Human Rights Watch received and reviewed documents, reports,
books, and criminal case files, as well as photographs and video footage, from
multiple sources. Most photographs in this report or included in the associated
multimedia presentation, as well as audio testimony from persons in the field,
were taken during the course of research for this report.

Interviewees were identified with the assistance of civil
society groups, government officials, and journalists, among others. Most
interviews were conducted individually, although they sometimes took place in
the presence of family members and friends. Many interviewees expressed
fear of reprisals by the successor groups, and, for that reason, requested to
speak anonymously. Details about individuals have been withheld when
information could place a person at risk, but are on file with Human Rights
Watch.

II. The Successor Groups: A Predictable Outcome
of a Flawed Demobilization

The successor groups, though different in important respects
from the paramilitary United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas
Unidas de Colombia, or AUC), have taken on many of the same roles, often with
some of the same personnel, in some cases with the same counterinsurgency
objectives of the AUC. And whether categorized as new paramilitaries or
organized criminal gangs, the successor groups are committing egregious abuses
and terrorizing the civilian population in ways all too reminiscent of the AUC.
As detailed in this chapter, the successor groups have been able to play this
role in part because of serious flaws in the AUC demobilization process, which
left portions of the paramilitary blocks active and failed to dismantle their
criminal networks and sources of funding and support.

A Fundamentally Flawed Demobilization

Between 2003 and 2006 the Colombian government implemented a
demobilization process for the AUC. The Colombian government reports that
31,671 paramilitaries demobilized as part of this process, meaning that they
participated in “demobilization” ceremonies in which many of them
turned over weapons, pledged to abandon their groups and cease criminal
activity, and entered government-sponsored reintegration programs.[11]
The majority of the persons who went through the ceremonies received pardons
for their membership in the group, but were never investigated for other
crimes. Since 2005, approximately 1,800 of the demobilized have begun a process
of confessions in exchange for sentencing benefits under the “Justice and
Peace Law”—a special law drafted by the Uribe administration to
offer a single reduced sentence of five to eight years to paramilitaries
responsible for serious crimes who fulfill various requirements.[12]

The demobilization process suffered from two basic problems.
First, the government failed to take basic steps to verify who was
demobilizing. As a result, in at least some regions there was fraud in the
demobilizations, and a portion of the groups remained active. Second, the
government failed to take advantage of the opportunity to interrogate
demobilizing individuals about the AUC blocks’ criminal networks and assets,
which may have allowed groups to hide assets, recruit new members and continue
operating under new guises.

Failure to Verify Who Was Demobilizing

It is clear that many paramilitary combatants did in fact go
through the demobilization process and abandoned their groups for good.
However, there is substantial evidence that many others who participated in the
demobilization process were stand-ins rather than paramilitaries, and that portions
of the groups remained active. There is also evidence that members of the
groups who supposedly demobilized continued engaging in illegal activities.

For example, Human Rights Watch has for years received
reports that, during the demobilization of the Cacique Nutibara Block in
Medellín in 2003, paramilitary forces recruited young men simply for the
purpose of participating in the demobilization ceremony, luring them with
promises of a generous stipend and other benefits. The reports of fraud were so
widespread that Colombia’s High Commissioner for Peace, Luis Carlos
Restrepo, stated that “48 hours before [the demobilization] they mixed in
common criminals and stuck them in the package of demobilized persons.”[13]
Officials from the Permanent Human Rights Unit of Medellín’s
Personería said that, based on surveys in Medellín neighborhoods,
they estimate that about 75 percent of the persons who demobilized as part of
the Cacique Nutibara and Heroes de Granada Blocks in Medellín were not
really combatants in those groups.[14]

Similarly, a demobilized man in Norte de Santander said
that, in the demobilization of the Catatumbo block, while most of the
group’s members did go through the process, “there were people who
never belonged to the group but demobilized because they wanted a benefit. He
claims they approached the commander, who said ‘if you want to you can
enter.’”[15]
In other regions, such as Nariño, Human Rights Watch has received reports
that paramilitary commanders put on a show of demobilizing while in fact
leaving behind a core group of members who could continue exerting territorial control.

In other cases, combatants and mid-level commanders who
supposedly demobilized have continued engaging in the same activities. One
demobilized individual told Human Rights Watch that his unit participated in
the demobilization process “due to pressure from the high commanders, but
our local commander told us that whoever wanted to return should just come back
to [the region]. They’re still there. That hasn’t finished.”[16]

The most obvious case of fraud is that of the demobilization
of the Northern Block, which had a strong presence in the coastal states of
Cesar, Magdalena, Atlántico, and La Guajira. Between March 8 and 10,
2006, 4,759 supposed members of the Northern Block demobilized alongside their
commander, Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, also known by his alias as “Jorge 40.”[17] But
the next day, investigators from the Human Rights Unit of the Attorney
General’s Office made a huge find: as part of a long-standing criminal investigation,
they arrested Édgar Ignacio Fierro Flórez, also known as “Don
Antonio,” a member of the Northern Block who had participated in the
demobilization ceremonies but who was reportedly continuing to run the
group’s operations in that part of the country.[18] In
a search, the investigators found computers and a massive quantity of
electronic and paper files about the Northern Block.

Human Rights Watch had access to internal investigative reports
about the contents of a computer, hard drives, and files, which show that there
was widespread fraud in the Northern Block’s demobilization.[19]
The files reportedly contain numerous emails and instant messenger discussions,
allegedly involving Jorge 40, in which he apparently gave orders to his
lieutenants to recruit as many people as possible from among peasants and
unemployed persons to participate in the demobilization. The messages include
instructions to prepare these civilians for the day of the demobilization
ceremony, so that they would know how to march and sing the paramilitaries’
anthem. They address details such as how to obtain uniforms, and include
instructions to guide the “demobilizing” persons on what to say to
prosecutors, telling them the questions prosecutors would ask, and how to
answer. For example, the messages emphasize that these persons must make clear
that there are no “urban” members of the organization—sectors
of the group continued operating in urban areas like Barranquilla. One message
says that the paramilitaries gave a list of individuals who were demobilizing
to the National Intelligence Service (Departamento Administrativo de Seguridad
or DAS) in advance, to see if any of them had criminal records, and that the
DAS had said they did not. Other messages discuss the members of the group who
would not demobilize, so that they could continue controlling key regions.

The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the
Organization of American States, which was present at the Northern
Block’s demobilization, described its concern over fraud:

[M]any persons claiming demobilization status did not
appear to be combatants... [T]he delegation was concerned at the low number of
combatants compared to the number of persons who said they were radio
operators, food distributors, or laundresses.... They repeatedly claimed that
they were following direct orders of the “maximum leader” of Bloque
Norte, Jorge 40, and they provided no information to identify lower ranking
officers of the armed unit, thus undermining the credibility of their statement.[20]

As Human Rights Watch has previously documented, the
demobilization process lacked mechanisms designed to ensure that those who were
going through the demobilization ceremonies were in fact paramilitaries or that
all paramilitaries in each block in fact demobilized.[21] As
noted by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights with respect to the Northern
Block’s demobilization, “there were no mechanisms for determining
which persons really belonged to the unit, and were therefore entitled to
social and economic benefits, nor for establishing consequences in case of
fraud.”[22]
The authorities failed to effectively interrogate the persons seeking
demobilization benefits, or conduct even a cursory investigation of who they
were and what they did.

Contrary to common belief, the vast majority of persons who
have “demobilized” have not done so pursuant to the “Justice
and Peace Law”—the specialized law designed to grant reduced
sentences to demobilized persons responsible for serious crimes.[23] Rather,
they have simply sought to receive economic benefits and pardons for their
membership in the group pursuant to Colombian Law 782 of 2002 and Decree 128 of
2003.

Until July of 2007, the Colombian government interpreted Law
782 and Decree 128 to allow the government to offer a pardon or “cessation”
of criminal proceedings for the crime of concierto para delinquir
(conspiracy, the standard charge against paramilitaries) and related crimes
such as illegal weapons possession.[24]

Thus, thousands of individuals going through the
demobilization ceremonies were simply asked to answer a handful of questions by
prosecutors, and later granted pardons or “cessation.”[25]They
then entered reintegration programs that offered them stipends and other
economic and social benefits, with no further scrutiny from the authorities.[26]

Because of the lack of rigor of the process, it is now very
difficult to determine how many of the demobilized were combatants, or how many
of the real paramilitaries remained active.

The government has had opportunities to restructure the demobilization
process to address some of these problems, but so far has failed to do so.
Specifically in July 2007, the Colombian Supreme Court ruled that
paramilitaries’ crimes did not constitute “political crimes,”
the only type of offense that is pardonable according to Law 782 of 2002 and
Colombia’s Constitution.[27]
Until the Supreme Court ruling, the government had been applying pardons for paramilitaries
on the ground that their crimes were political.[28]
The Court’s ruling, while not specifically addressing the application of
Law 782, contradicted the government’s interpretation of “paramilitarism”
as a political crime that could be pardoned.

But instead of taking advantage of this new opportunity to
restructure the demobilization process and conduct more thorough interviews and
investigations of the demobilized persons, President Uribe reacted to the
ruling by accusing the Court of operating with an “ideological
bias,” and claiming that the Court’s independence was only
“relative” because “all the institutions of the State must
cooperate with the good of the Nation.”[29]
Uribe administration officials claimed that the ruling threatened to derail the
demobilization process because approximately 19,000 individuals who had gone
through demobilization ceremonies had not yet received pardons, and now they
would be barred from doing so.[30]

To avoid having to investigate the demobilized
paramilitaries, in July 2009 the Colombian Congress amended the country’s
Penal Code to allow the Office of the Attorney General to apply what is known
as the “principle of opportunity” (a form of prosecutorial
discretion) to suspend investigations against or refuse to prosecute
demobilized persons.[31]

Failure to Dismantle Paramilitaries’ Criminal
and Financial Networks

To secure a genuine and lasting paramilitary demobilization,
the government should have focused on the sources of their power: their drug
trafficking routes and criminal activity, their assets, their financial
backers, and their support networks in the political system and military.

But as Human Rights Watch has documented in past reports,
the government actively resisted efforts to dismantle paramilitaries’
networks and to investigate their accomplices.[32]
For example, the Justice and Peace Law, which offers reduced sentences to
paramilitaries responsible for atrocities in exchange for their demobilization,
as originally drafted by the government, did not provide for effective
sanctions if paramilitaries seeking reduced sentences failed to confess their
crimes or turn over illegally acquired assets.

Some of these problems were corrected thanks to a
Constitutional Court ruling, which said that paramilitaries who wanted reduced
sentences would be required to give full and truthful confessions and turn over
illegally acquired assets, and that they would risk losing reduced sentences if
they lied.[33]
As a result, throughout 2007 and part of 2008, prosecutors began to obtain some
valuable information from paramilitary commanders about their crimes and
accomplices. At the same time, the Colombian Supreme Court began a series of
unprecedented investigations of paramilitary collaborators in the political
system.[34]
Today, more than 80 members of the Colombian Congress have come under Supreme
Court investigation or have been convicted for links to paramilitaries.[35]

Yet the implementation of the reformed Justice and Peace Law
has continued to suffer from serious problems.[36]
The vast majority of paramilitaries who demobilized are not actively
participating in the Justice and Peace Law process, as only the ones who
already had criminal records or were afraid they might be caught had a real
incentive to participate—the overwhelming majority simply sought pardons
under Law 782. The Attorney General’s Office lists 3,712 persons as having
applied for benefits under the Justice and Peace Law.[37]
Of these, only 1,836—less than half—have started their
“versiones libres”—the statements to prosecutors in which
they’re supposed to confess their crimes if they wish to receive reduced
sentences. And only five are reported to have completed their confessions.[38]
The leaders who probably had the most information to offer have been extradited
to the United States, where they have, for the most part, ceased talking to
Colombian authorities.[39]

The Colombian government has yet to make a serious
nationwide effort to track down the AUC’s massive illegally obtained
assets and wealth, which can easily be used to recruit new members and continue
running criminal operations under new guises.

Among other illegal activities, the paramilitaries were
responsible for widespread land takings, but the government has yet to identify
the stolen land. “I left my land with my children because of threats and
massacres in Ungía,
Chocó,” one displaced woman told Human Rights Watch. “Those
who didn’t leave are now dead... The majority of people from there left
land that today the paramilitaries possess.”[40]
Today, according to official statistics, more than 3 million people are
registered as internally displaced in Colombia.[41]
A recent national poll of displaced persons found that the largest group—37
percent—was pushed out by paramilitary groups.[42]
Most left behind land or real estate.[43]
Official estimates of the amount of land left behind by displaced persons range
from 2.9 million hectares (between 2001 and 2006, according to the State
Comptroller’s Office) to 6.8 million hectares (according to the
Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation, or
“Social Action,” in a 2004 study).[44]
The takings have particularly affected Afro-Colombian and indigenous
communities that have been pushed out of their traditional territories.[45]

As of February 2008, the National Reparations Fund, charged
with holding land and assets turned over by paramilitaries during the Justice
and Peace Process, contained only US$5 million worth of assets in the form of
land, cattle, cash, and vehicles.[46]
As of October 2009, only thirty-one paramilitaries, and six paramilitary
blocks, had officially turned over assets to the government as part of the
Justice and Peace Process.[47]

At least part of the problem is that the government itself decreed
that individual paramilitaries could turn over illegal assets anytime before
they were actually charged with crimes under the Justice and Peace Law—giving
them little incentive to turn them over early on.[48]
Once they were extradited, most leaders lost even that incentive.

Identifying and recovering the land that paramilitaries took
by force is a complex task that will require a well-planned strategy and the
investment of adequate resources. The Justice and Peace Law, various
implementing decrees, and Constitutional Court rulings require the government
to ensure land restitution.[49]
But the government has only recently started to establish the regional
commissions on land restitution required by the Justice and Peace Law.[50]
And it has yet to invest adequate resources to collect basic information about
the displaced persons and the land or other property that was taken from them.[51]

Unless the government takes effective measures to identify
the land that paramilitaries took and return it to its owners, it will be
leaving intact a significant source of wealth and power for paramilitary
accomplices and front men. Due to the lack of investigation of this issue, it
is difficult to know for sure to what extent AUC assets and financing sources
have continued fueling the activities of the successor groups. However, as
described in later sections, in regions such as Urabá landowners who
benefited from paramilitary takings have been reported to be working with
successor groups to threaten and even kill victims who seek to recover land.

Finally, as Human Rights Watch has documented before,
despite the efforts of the Supreme Court and others to investigate and hold
accountable paramilitary collaborators in politics and the military, the
government has repeatedly taken steps that have undermined or limited progress
in this area.[52]
In particular, the Uribe administration has repeatedly launched public personal
attacks on the Supreme Court and its members, in what looks like a concerted
campaign to smear and discredit the court, and has proposed constitutional
amendments to remove the so-called “para-politics” investigations
from the court’s jurisdiction. It has also blocked meaningful efforts to
reform Congress to eliminate paramilitary influence.[53] According
to recent news reports, several of the politicians who have come under
investigation and have resigned are supporting candidacies of their siblings
and spouses to replace them, so that they may retain their influence in
Congress.[54]

Links between the AUC and its Successors

There are differences between the successor groups and the
AUC. First, the successor groups, for the most part, appear to operate
independently from one another—they have yet to form a single coalition
articulating their shared goals and interests or coordinating their criminal
activities and, in some cases, military-like operations. Second, their leaders
are less visible than some of the AUC leaders, such as Carlos Castaño,
were. And third, the focus of most successor groups appears to be less on
counterinsurgency. Nonetheless, they share with the AUC a deep involvement in
mafia-like criminal activities, including drug-trafficking, as has been noted
not only by the government but also by the OAS Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia (the MAPP/OAS).[55]
And as described below, there are other significant ways in which these groups
are a continuation of, and are similar to, the AUC’s blocks.

Leadership

Based on police reports about the structure of the successor
groups, it appears that most are led by former mid-level commanders of the AUC
who either never demobilized or simply continued their operations after
supposedly demobilizing. This is true of Pedro Oliverio Guerrero (Cuchillo),
the leader of ERPAC; several of the leaders of the groups operating in
Medellín; and Ovidio Isaza in the Middle Magdalena region, among others.
Daniel Rendón, who led the Urabeños until his arrest in 2009, was
also an AUC member and the brother of Freddy Rendón, the leader of the
Elmer Cárdenas block of the AUC. The main exception is the Rastrojos
group, which is reported to have developed from an armed wing of the North of
the Valley drug cartel, which was barred from participating in the demobilization
process.

Drug Trafficking and Other Criminal Activity

Like the AUC blocks, the successor groups are deeply
involved in drug trafficking and other criminal activities, including
smuggling, extortion, and money laundering. In fact, the AUC was a descendant
of “Muerte a Secuestradores” (Death to Kidnappers), an alliance
formed in the 1980s by the drug lords Pablo Escobar, Fidel Castaño,
Gonzalo Rodríguez Gacha, and others to free relatives or traffickers who
had been kidnapped by guerrillas.[56]

In Norte de Santander, for example, even though the
Catatumbo Block of the AUC engaged in horrific massacres and killings of
civilians whom they labeled as “guerrilla sympathizers,” sources
said they rarely confronted the guerrillas directly. One of their main
activities was controlling the lucrative drug corridors and smuggling over the
border with Venezuela, as well as extortion and other criminal activity.[57]

Many well-known paramilitary leaders like “Don
Berna” or “Macaco” were known primarily as drug traffickers
before they claimed the mantle of paramilitarism.[58]

One senior police officer went so far as to tell Human
Rights Watch that he saw clear continuity between the paramilitaries and the
successor groups, in the sense that the AUC’s blocks “were not paramilitaries;
they were narcotrafficking mafias that latched on to paramilitarism. [The
successor groups] are the product of a demobilization process that was full of
lies. Those guys tricked all of us. They included young boys who were
displaced. The ones who killed did not demobilize.”[59]

Counterinsurgency Operations

Human Rights Watch received information indicating that some
of the groups (or sectors of them) occasionally engage in counterinsurgency
operations and persecute persons whom they view as FARC collaborators,
particularly in regions where the FARC still has a presence. For example, in
Meta, residents reported that members of the successor groups had been seeking
information about persons who might have helped guerrillas, and had threatened
some people as “guerrilla collaborators.” In Nariño, too,
Human Rights Watch received reports of possible confrontations between some of
the successor groups and the FARC.

Many of the threats that trade unionists, human rights
defenders, and others have received from the successor groups refer to their
targets as guerrillas or guerrilla collaborators, using language similar to
that used by the AUC. Similarly, threatening flyers that have appeared in many
Colombian towns and cities in the last year or so, and which are sometimes
signed by “Black Eagles” or other similar groups, often label their
recipients “military objectives” and accuse them of being
“guerrillas.”[60]

Most successor groups appear less focused on
counterinsurgency than the AUC. In fact, government sources often speak of
links between the successor groups and FARC or ELN guerrillas, at least for
purposes of drug trafficking. Several sources told Human Rights Watch that in
Nariño and Cauca, the Rastrojos (which were never part of the AUC) have
developed an alliance with the ELN guerrillas against the FARC to control
territory for drug trafficking.[61]

Yet the AUC itself included several groups that did not have
a strong counterinsurgency focus, such as Don Berna’s groups in
Medellín, which were to a large extent focused on controlling criminal
activity. The same is true of the groups run by Carlos Mario Jiménez
Naranjo (“Macaco”), the head of the Central Bolívar Block of
the AUC; Rodrigo Pérez Alzate (“Pablo Sevillano”), the head
of the Liberators of the South Block; and Francisco Javier Zuluaga
(“Gordolindo”) who led the Pacific Block of the AUC.[62]

According to one of the specialized prosecutors charged with
investigating the successor groups, these groups are “a development from
the paramilitaries... That ideological base that the paramilitaries had, which
was already very questionable, now they have it even less.”[63]

III. The Rise and Growth of the Successor Groups

The AUC demobilizations officially ended on August 15, 2006.[64]
In their aftermath, scores of successor groups with close ties to the AUC
appeared around the country.

The OAS Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia (or
MAPP), tracking official information from the Colombian police, reported in
early 2007 that it had identified “22 units, with the participation of
middle-ranking officers—demobilized or not—the recruitment of
former combatants... and the control of illicit economic activity.”[65]
The MAPP estimated the groups had approximately 3,000 members.[66]

Since then, the groups’ membership and areas of
operation have consistently grown. Estimates of the successor groups’
number and membership vary a great deal by source, but in some cases run as
high as 10,200.[67]
In mid-2008, the MAPP expressed concern “about the continued existence
and even increase in these factions, despite actions taken by law enforcement
agencies. This shows a significant resistance and revival capacity, with
resources making possible ongoing recruitment and the persistence of corruption
at the local level.”[68]

The police, who have the most conservative figures, say the
total number of groups has dropped, as many have fused or absorbed one another
and some have disappeared or been defeated.[69]
But their membership and regional presence continues to grow. As of July 2009,
the police reported that the groups had 4,037 members, an increase over the
3,760 they said existed a few months before, in February of 2009. They operate
in 24 of Colombia’s 32 departments. Police figures also show that between
February and July of 2009, the groups increased their areas of operation by 21
municipalities, jumping from 152 to 173.[70]

The Principal Successor Groups

As of mid-2009, police documents stated that eight successor
groups were in operation.[71]
According to sources in the police and the Office of the Attorney General, four
of the groups are significantly stronger and are the main focus of attention of
the authorities:[72]

Los de Urabá or the
Urabeños: This group was formerly run by Daniel Rendón
(also known as “Don Mario”), a non-demobilized AUC member who
was also the brother of Freddy Rendón Arias (“El
Alemán”), the former leader of the “Elmer
Cárdenas” Block of the AUC, which supposedly demobilized in
2006.[73]
After Don Mario’s arrest in early 2009, the police reported that the
group had come under the command of Juan de Dios Usuga David, also known
as “Giovanni.”[74]
However, in October 2009 the police reported the arrest of another man,
Omar Alberto Gómez, known as “El Guajiro,” whom they
identified as the group’s leader.[75]
According to police documents, this group, which has in the past used
other names such as “Heroes de Castaño” (the
“Heroes of Castaño,” alluding to disappeared AUC chief
Carlos Castaño) and “Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia”
(Gaitanista Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) has spread its area of
operation from the Urabá region of Chocó and Antioquia to
nine departments and seventy-nine municipalities. The group is reported to
have 1,120 members.[76]

The Rastrojos:
According to multiple reports received by Human Rights Watch, the
Rastrojos were an armed wing of the North of the Valley drug cartel, who
have historically been tied to Wilber Varela (also known as
“Jabón”), a drug trafficker who was reportedly killed
in Venezuela in January 2008.[77]
They were believed to have had links to demobilized paramilitary leader
Carlos Mario Jiménez (also known as “Macaco”).[78]
The group attempted to participate in the demobilization process but
ultimately was not allowed to do so because the government considered it a
criminal organization.[79]
Official documents state that the Rastrojos now operate in 10 departments
and 50 municipalities, have 1,394 members, and are commanded by Javier
Antonio Calle Serna (also known as “El Doctor”).[80]

The Paisas: Multiple
sources told Human Rights Watch that the Paisas are the heirs of
paramilitary leader Don Berna, and are related to his “Envigado
Office,” a criminal organization in Medellín. Don Berna is
reported to have retained control over these groups from prison. Since his
extradition, there have been reports of substantial infighting and
possible fracturing of the groups. Official documents state that the
Paisas operate in 7 departments and 45 municipalities and have 415
members; their leader is said to be Fabio León
Vélez
Correa (also known as “Nito”).[81]

Ejército Revolucionario Popular Antiterrorista
Colombiano, or ERPAC (Colombian Revolutionary Popular Antiterrorist Army):
This group is led by Pedro Oliverio Guerrero Castillo, also known as
“Cuchillo.” Cuchillo is a long-running paramilitary leader,
first operating in the private army of drug-trafficker Gonzalo Rodriguez
Gacha, and then joining the AUC’s Centauros Block. He is reported to
have killed the then-leader of the Centauros Block, Miguel Arroyave.[82]
He participated in the demobilization process as the leader of the Heroes
del Guaviare front of the Centauros Block, but continued his illegal
activity. The ERPAC operates mostly on the plains east of Bogotá,
in the departments of Meta, Casanare, Vichada, and Guaviare, though police
reports state it also has a presence in Arauca and Guainia. Police
estimate it has 770 members.[83]

In addition, the police report having identified the
following other groups:

Renacer (Rebirth): The
police report that this group operates in 11 municipalities of the
department of Chocó under the leadership of José
María Negrete (also known as “Raúl”), and has
100 members.[84]

Nueva Generación (New
Generation): Human Rights Watch has received substantial credible
information indicating that this group was created by members of the Liberators
of the South Block of the AUC almost immediately after its supposed
demobilization. The police report that this group operates in three
municipalities in the department of Nariño, under the leadership of
Omar Grannoble (also known as “El Tigre”) and has 114 members.[85]

Los del Magdalena Medio
(the ones from the Middle Magdalena region): The police report that
this group operates in eight municipalities in four departments and has 80
members. Its leader, according to police documents, is Ovidio Isaza (also
known as Roque).[86]
Isaza is a former leader of the AUC in the Magdalena Medio region. He is also
the son of Ramon Isaza, one of the first and most prominent AUC leaders.
After participating in the demobilization process, he never went through
the Justice and Peace Process, and was released by authorities due to lack
of evidence.[87]

The Machos: Like the Rastrojos, this group is
reported to be the armed branch of a preexisting drug trafficking cartel.
The police reports it operates in two municipalities of the Valle del
Cauca department and has 44 members.[88]

Interviews with victims and local authorities around the
country suggest that Colombian police figures underestimate the membership and
number of the successor groups. In some regions, Human Rights Watch received
reports about the existence of groups that the police did not recognize as
such. For example, in an interview with Human Rights Watch, a senior member of
the police said that the Black Eagles group in Nariño is “more
mythical” than real.[89]
Yet Human Rights Watch received repeated, consistent statements from people in
Nariño about the operation of the Black Eagles, who controlled territory
in several areas, threatened civilians, and were apparently engaged in a bloody
turf war against the Rastrojos over control of the port city of Tumaco. Less
than two months after denying the existence of the Black Eagles in meetings
with Human Rights Watch, the police announced the arrest of 36 members of the
Black Eagles in Nariño.[90]
Similarly, even though the police list ERPAC as having 770 members, news
reports cite the army and the investigative arm of the Office of the Attorney
General as estimating that it has 1,120 members and is rapidly growing through
active recruitment.[91]

What are the Black Eagles?

In many different parts of the country, witnesses that spoke
to Human Rights Watch said that the persons who were controlling crime and
killing, forcibly displacing, raping, or threatening them, had identified
themselves as members of the “Black Eagles.” Often, flyers and
written threats against human rights defenders and others are signed by the
Black Eagles.

Yet members of the Police told Human Rights Watch that the
“Black Eagles” was not a single group, but rather a convenient
label that many groups, including local gangs, had appropriated to generate
fear in the population.[92]

As described later in this report, in Nariño, Human
Rights Watch received consistent reports by several residents and authorities
that indicate that the Black Eagles in that region are in fact a single
successor group with a high level of coordination, operating in many ways like
a former AUC block. In Urabá, Human Rights Watch received reports that
the local successor group (there called the Urabeños) at times has
called itself the Black Eagles, using the name interchangeably with others. These
groups, at least, are not simply local gangs. Nonetheless, Human Rights Watch
did not receive substantial information indicating that the various groups
using the label Black Eagles are a single national group.

Recruitment of New Members

The successor groups have been actively recruiting members,
offering very high wages, and sometimes threatening people to get them to join.
They often target demobilized persons.

According to one demobilized individual in Sucre, when he
demobilized in 2005, his commander told the group that “whoever wanted to
turn himself in should do so, but that whoever wants to return, should
return” to their area of operation in Antioquia. “They’re
there. That’s not over,” he said. In fact, “there are lots of
active groups of the same paramilitaries. Even yesterday when I went to school
a classmate told me that ‘Cucho’ called him so we would pick up
some guys and go out there. They’re paying 500 or more. They’ve
approached me several times, old commanders, friends... Lots of guys have
gone.”[93]

Another demobilized man said that “there were people
who went to the new groups... There are kids who ask me if I’d go again. You’re
afraid to talk to anybody. Many have been killed because they’ve spoken
about something. The self-defense forces aren’t finished.... There are
other people who go too, new people. [The pay] doesn’t drop below half a
million pesos. It’s easy to enter, but leaving is difficult.”[94]A local official in Sincelejo told Human Rights Watch that
he knew of approximately 14 cases in which demobilized men had been approached
by their former commanders to rejoin their groups.[95]

A member of an organization of demobilized paramilitaries in
Barrancabermeja said that members of his organization had been murdered.
“We’re in a tough moment because we are being threatened by people
who want us to return to crime. It hurts because we’ve tried to organize,
but we have received threats... [T]here are still criminal groups that see the
demobilized as possible recruits and they do it through threats.”[96]

He recounted how, in mid-2008, when a group of demobilized
men was attending a psychological support session outdoors as part of the
reintegration program, armed men passed by in a motorcycle and shot at them,
injuring the psychologist and three of the program participants.[97]
A few days later, on August 19, he said he received a call from someone saying
he should meet the “new company” at a soccer field. The demobilized
man said they threatened his family. He did not go, but was afraid of what
would happen.[98]

MAPP officials told Human Rights Watch that they estimated
that more than 50 percent of the members of the successor groups were new
recruits. Often, the groups use threats and deception to convince new members
to join, according to the MAPP.[99]
They said some of the strongest recruitment they had documented was taking
place in the regions of Urabá, Cesar, La Guajira and the Middle
Magdalena, Buenaventura, and the Nariño coast. “There are historic
areas for recruitment, that the groups know,” said a MAPP representative.

Often recruits are taken to work in distant regions. For
example, in the southern state of Nariño, Human Rights Watch received
numerous reports that many members of the group that citizens identify as the
Black Eagles had an accent characteristic of people from Antioquia, in the
north of the country. Similarly, Human Rights Watch received reports that many
young men from the western Urabá region were operating under Cuchillo’s
command on the plains states, in the east of Colombia.

One man in the Urabá region of Chocó
department described how the Black Eagles had taken 18 young men from Belen de
Bajirá. “One was my grandson and he escaped. They took them to
Guaviare to join the Black Eagles there. They’re new faces, not from
here. And they send the ones from here to other places.”[100]

The groups’ frequent recruitment and movement of men
from one part of the country to another suggests a high level of national
integration and operation by the groups.

Human Rights Watch also received reports of young men who
remained in the demobilization program but were simultaneously working for
paramilitary groups. Sources that work with the reintegration program in the
department of Norte de Santander said that many participants, especially in the
towns of Tibú and Puerto Santander, “continue committing crimes.
But we can’t do anything until somebody reports them... [T]he guys are
with the police and pass in front of the police, and even the community itself
seeks them out [instead of] going to the police to complain... It’s
perverse... But there’s a situation of silence... even though it’s
a widely known secret [secreto a gritos].”[101]
One demobilized man living in Puerto Santander agreed, stating that “the
ones in Puerto Santander have a strange monopoly... They go to the training
sessions and meetings with the OAS but they’re working with the Black
Eagles.”[102]

IV. The Successor Groups’ Human Rights and
Humanitarian Impact

The successor groups are committing widespread and serious
abuses, including massacres, killings, forced disappearances, rape, forced
displacement, threats, extortion, kidnappings, and recruitment of children as
combatants.

The most common abuses are killings of and threats against
civilians, including trade unionists, journalists, human rights defenders, and
victims of the AUC seeking restitution of land and justice as part of the
Justice and Peace Process. They are one of the main actors responsible for the
forced displacement of over a quarter of a million Colombians every year.

The MAPP has noted that in several regions people “do
not perceive an improvement in their security conditions” as a result of
the paramilitary demobilization.[103]
Colombians in many different regions told Human Rights Watch that the climate
of fear in which they lived had not meaningfully changed as a result of the
demobilizations.

The government has occasionally acknowledged this fact, in
an indirect manner. For example, in its 2007 report on human rights in
Colombia, the Human Rights Observatory of the Vice-President’s Office
stated that “[h]istorically the self-defense forces were the principal
group responsible for massacres in the country, but with their disappearance...
there is an increase in the percentage of cases with no known author... [S]everal
of these cases ... are linked to the appearance of new criminal gangs linked to
drug trafficking.”[104]

In fact, between 2007 and 2008 the number of yearly
massacres in Colombia jumped by 42 percent, to 37 cases (involving 169 victims)
from 26 cases (involving 128 victims). According to the Human Rights
Observatory, the successor groups were using the massacres “as a means of
revenge, to take control of territory, show power, and conduct ‘purges’
within their organizations, all of this directed towards controlling the drug
business.”[105]

Violence and Threats against Vulnerable Groups

In every region Human Rights Watch visited, it received
numerous reports of threats and killings by the successor groups. Often their
targets are human rights defenders, trade unionists, journalists, and victims
of the AUC who seek to claim their rights. Such threats often have a chilling
effect on, or otherwise impair, the legitimate work of their targets.

For example, on November 4, 2007, Yolanda Becerra, president
of the Popular Women’s Organization (Organización Femenina
Popular or OFP) in Barrancabermeja, Santander department, reported being
assaulted, beaten, and injured by armed men who broke into her home and told
her that she had 48 hours to leave town or they would “finish off her
family.” She had previously reported receiving a written death threat
from “Black Eagles” and had been labeled an “enemy of the
peace process” by a former paramilitary commander. As a result of the threats
and attack Yolanda had to move from Barrancabermeja to Bucaramanga, where she
continues leading the OFP, but has to take significant security precautions.[106]

A woman who coordinates a group on disappearances said
“I live in a high-risk community where we coexist with the
paramilitaries. This year people arrived at my house and said that I had to
defend ... a demobilized paramilitary who was in jail. They threatened
me.”[107]

In the first half of 2008 there was a wave of threats
against human rights groups, trade unionists, and others, usually signed by
Black Eagles or other successor groups. Several of the threats targeted people
associated with a massive march against paramilitary violence and state crimes
on March 6, 2008. For example, on March 11, 2008, the “Bogotá
Block” of the “Black Eagles” sent one threat in three parts
to various organizations and people involved in the march, calling for
“death to the leaders of the march, guerrillas, and collaborators,”
and declaring various organizations and individuals to be “military
objectives.”[108]
Another written threat circulated the following day to Semana magazine,
the CUT trade union confederation, Peace Brigades International, indigenous
groups, and human rights organizations. Signed by the head of the “Central
Command of the Rearming Black Eagles,” this threat announced a
“total rearming of paramilitary forces” and declared various groups
to be military targets.[109]
In the week following the march, four trade unionists were killed—some of
them were reported to have been organizers of the march in their region.[110]
The organization Nuevo Arco Iris, which has been deeply involved in monitoring paramilitary
infiltration of the political system, reported a break-in by armed men who
stole computer files. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights also reported
that on February 28, 2008, there was a shooting against the house of Luz
Adriana González, a member of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of
Human Rights and a promoter of the March 6 event in the department of Pereira.[111]

The threats have included international observers and
foreign embassies. In March 2008, eight foreign embassies in Bogotá were
reported to have received threats signed by the “Black Eagles.”[112]
Similarly, in November 2007, a representative of the MAPP was threatened by
successor groups operating in Medellín.[113]

In the southern part of Bolivar department, the Peace and
Development Program of the Magdalena Medio, as well as various priests and
non-governmental organizations and the trade union Fedeagromisbol, reported
receiving threats in the first half of 2008 from “members of paramilitary
structures that operate freely, publicly, and openly in the South of
Bolivar.” Specifically, they had received e-mail threats signed by
“Black Eagles, Northern Block of Colombia,” indicating that they
were being followed and that the “annihilation plan against [them] could
start at any moment.”[114]

Diro César González Tejada, a journalist in
Barrancabermeja, Santander, who self-publishes a small local newspaper that
reports on violence and human rights abuses in the city, described being
displaced for a year after two armed men went looking for him at his house.
After returning to Barrancabermeja, he said, “we have been permanently
followed by armed men who are recognized paramilitaries.” Diro said that
he receives threats at his office and that the successor groups
“constantly call my wife, recounting to her where she has traveled and
saying ‘we’re going to kill you’... Except for going to the
office, I don’t leave my house. I don’t have a social life, I
can’t go anywhere without my guards.” Diro said he had been able to
protect himself through the support of non-governmental organizations and due
to international attention to his case, but state authorities had regularly
denied that anything was happening in Barrancabermeja. “If this is my
case as a journalist, what can you expect when a peasant makes a
complaint?” he said.[115]

In November 2009, several human rights and indigenous groups
in Nariño received a written threat signed by the Rastrojos’
“Urban Commandos,” which associated the organizations with
left-wing guerrillas and warned their members might be killed.[116]

Raped and Threatened for Helping Victims

“Lucía,” who asked not to be identified
by name, described being raped by the Black Eagles in Eastern Antioquia in 2007
to punish her for her work supporting victims:

I was advising a woman [who had been a victim of the AUC].
It was raining and far from the buses so I spent the night. After midnight
someone knocked on the door... Five men in hoods calling themselves the Black
Eagles broke in and began interrogating me about my work... They told me it was
forbidden for me to do that in the municipality. They didn’t want victims
to know their rights or report abuses. Before leaving, two of the men abused
the woman and me sexually, for a long time.[117]

Lucía got pregnant as a
result of the rape, but said she eventually had a miscarriage “from the
anger and depression... It’s the most horrible thing that can happen to
you because you feel incompetent and completely vulnerable because you
can’t do anything.... It’s their way of intimidating people.”[118]
When Lucía continued her work, the Black Eagles found her again:

Each time I did less. [But then] a TV promo appeared [featuring
some of my work. The next day] four armed men knocked on my door. They put me
on their pick-up truck and blindfolded me. I thought I would never return home
because there had been a lot of very tough killings, where they were leaving
people chopped up... Only a short time before they had killed one of my friends
and left her in pieces in a sack... [Another man] said they didn’t know
how to talk to me, they asked if I didn’t have a family, and if it
hadn’t been enough with the other lesson.... They gave me 15 days to
leave the region.[119]

The threats against her family
finally forced Lucía to try to report the crimes and leave town, but she
faced numerous difficulties in getting assistance:

I went to the National Commission on Reparation and
Reconciliation but they said they couldn’t do anything and sent me to the
Justice and Peace prosecutors. The prosecutor ... said she couldn’t do
anything because it happened after the demobilization process. I had to go
home. [Later] I went to the Gaula to report it as a kidnapping... When they
finally met with me, they laughed and said it was my fault because I knew human
rights defenders get killed, and I shouldn’t have continued after the
warning.... [Eventually] the Ombudsman’s Office in Medellín took
the report and [I got protection as a human rights defender for three months
through the Ministry of Interior.] Later, other NGOs and institutions have
helped me. The investigation has gone nowhere... I now live in fear, because I
don’t know who I can trust...[120]

Lucía had in fact been victimized before, but by FARC
guerrillas, who kidnapped her in 1995 and held her for ransom for six months.
She was finally released when her family bankrupted itself to pay her ransom.

Anti-Union Violence

Trade unionists, who were frequently targeted by the AUC,
which stigmatized them as guerrilla fronts, have faced continued threats and
violence from successor groups. According to the National Labor School, in 2008
39 trade unionists were killed. Complete numbers for 2009 were not yet available
as of this writing, but as of December 7, the National Labor School had
registered 36 killings of trade unionists in the year. Due to the widespread
impunity in such cases, in most registered cases of anti-union violence the
perpetrator remains unknown. However, there are good reasons to believe the
successor groups are involved in many of the killings: in 2008 trade unionists
reported receiving 498 threats (against 405 union members). Of those, 265 were
identified as having come from the successor groups, while 220 came from
unidentified actors.[121]

The threats have a chilling effect on union activity. For
example, Over Dorado, from the ADIDA teachers’ union based in
Medellín, said that in the first nine months of 2008 he had received
20-25 threats over the phone and email. In a recording of one such phone
threat, which he played for Human Rights Watch, the perpetrator accused him of
being a terrorist and mentioned a failed attack against him. Because of the
overwhelming failure to hold perpetrators to account in past cases of
anti-union violence, such threats are even more alarming to unionists. Dorado
said one of his colleagues, Julio Gómez, a senior member of the union,
was killed in 2007. “But they only came to interview me about the case
three days ago. He was killed a year ago, and they are only investigating now
because of pressure from the gringos... The death of union leaders has affected
the organization a lot, because we were strengthening the union and having an
effect on national politics.... But the threats have a silencing effect.”[122]

In Cúcuta, representatives of ASINORT, another teacher’s
union for the state of Norte de Santander, said that even though there were
fewer killings of union members than in the past, “the violence has
transformed itself... [T]hey kill a few and threaten the rest. The threat is
effective and people are afraid of speaking out.... Among the unionists, fear
prevails, [and union activity] is almost underground. We keep the lowest
profile we can.”[123]

Local Threats and Killings: a Constant Problem

The successor groups not only target human rights defenders,
trade unionists, and journalists, but also ordinary citizens, including
peasants, community leaders, small business persons, and simply neighbors who
get in the way of the groups’ objectives.

In Cúcuta, sources described how successor groups had
circulated flyers ordering curfews in certain neighborhoods, where they were
seeking to control lucrative contraband and the drug business. “They
control the neighborhoods through social cleansing. The flyers state that after
9 p.m. they can’t go out,” said an international observer in
Cúcuta. “People see the drugs ... and behind this, there are other
businesses, money-lending, police corruption. They handle the daily problems in
the neighborhood.... They recruit young men.”[124]

Some sources said that, before the demobilization, the AUC
had taken over the provision of “private security services” in the
city, and the successor groups were pursuing the same strategy. “They
began to kill the security guards in the communities to replace them with their
own cooperatives of security guards and in that way control the community. They
killed the security guard in our neighborhood,” said a representative of
Fundación Progresar, a human rights organization in Cúcuta.[125]
Another resident said “the security committees search people, mistreat
them.... They threaten you, they get you with kicks and fists. There are
informants about everything that’s going on in the neighborhood. Now
we’re afraid to go out at night. The sense of anxiety continues.”[126]

The president of a neighborhood council in Cúcuta
described narrowly escaping being killed by unknown assailants who may have
belonged to successor groups: “I was afraid of joining the council
because my wife had warned me that people who joined were
‘disappeared’ or killed... After the first meeting ... I was
walking and young men approached.... The man walking next to me got shot in the
shoulder and dropped to the ground. Then they shot me six times.... I
don’t understand how I survived because the guy next to me ...
died.”[127]

One demobilized man told us that in Puerto Santander (Norte
de Santander) “people involved in contraband have to pay the Black Eagles....
They met with the gasoline carriers ... and made a list of the people who buy
gasoline... [T]hey’re in drug trafficking too... They take care of coca
crops ... and have labs and handle transportation. The police protect
them.”[128]

A woman in Medellín said that she had been displaced
from Turbo, Antioquia, after receiving threats from a group she identified as
the Black Eagles. “They threatened us because we were selling drugs.... I
think they are the same paramilitaries but they have changed names. The
paramilitaries also used to persecute the people who sold drugs if they
didn’t pay them a tax... They have killed dealers and young people... I
was directly threatened: two men came on motorcycles and said that those people
who sell drugs will be killed.”[129]

Threats and Violence against Victims of the AUC

Victims and relatives of victims of the AUC who have sought
to obtain justice for the paramilitaries’ crimes have repeatedly been
threatened, attacked, and even killed. Often, they point to successor groups as
the sources of the threats.

The most prominent case involves Yolanda Izquierdo, who was
shot to death alongside her husband outside their house in Córdoba in
January 2007. Izquierdo had been representing families who were seeking the
return of thousands of hectares of land under the Justice and Peace Process. She
had repeatedly sought protection from the authorities, but her requests had
gone unheeded. Police have since arrested Víctor Alonso Rojas (known by
his alias as “Jawi”), an alleged member of the
“Urabeños” and reported to be former close advisor of AUC
leader Salvatore Mancuso, for the killing. Human rights prosecutors have also
charged Sor Teresa Gómez, a sister-in-law of AUC leaders Carlos and
Vicente Castaño, in connection with the assassination.[130]
Gómez is known for controlling extensive tracts of land, reportedly
taken from displaced persons by paramilitaries, in the Urabá region.[131]

A victim from the El Salado massacre told Human Rights Watch
that she had not told her story to representatives from the Attorney
General’s Office because she was afraid she or her children would be
attacked if anyone found out what had happened to her: “[in my city] I
don’t say I’m from El Salado because I have my kids.... Because
[the city I live in] is very dangerous, at 6 p.m. we already have the door
closed. I’m calm in the day but not at night because the Black Eagles are
there.”[132]

A woman who had filed a complaint about her father’s
disappearance described how a successor group forced her to move out of her
home in 2006: “The group arrived at my house and threatened us... [T]hey
took away my documents. They ... said that if I complained about disappearances
or being displaced, they would kill me... [T]here were 35 of them and they were
camouflaged.”[133]

Another group of relatives of persons killed in an AUC massacre
in Santander said they had been threatened after seeking justice through the
Justice and Peace Process, but they were too afraid to disclose details of the
threats.[134]
Similarly, the family of the members of an investigative commission from the
Attorney General’s Office who were “disappeared” or executed
by the Northern Block of the AUC have reported being threatened and harassed
for seeking the truth about the fate of their loved ones.[135]

According to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, in 2007 the National Police reported 160 death threats against
victims claiming their rights and the National Commission on Reparation and
Reconciliation recorded 13 murders of victims pressing for restitution of their
land and other assets.[136]

Juan
David Díaz: Threatened for Seeking Justice

Juan David Díaz Chamorro is the son of Eudaldo
“Tito” Díaz, who served as mayor of El Roble, Sucre, and was
killed in April 2002 by paramilitaries, allegedly operating in collusion with
local politicians. At a 2002 regional security meeting with President Uribe,
senior officials from the public security forces, and several Sucre regional
officials including governor Salvador Arana, Tito had complained that regional
politicians were trying to take resources from the El Roble treasury to finance
the AUC, and he reported how thousands of people in the department had been
killed by the paramilitaries. Juan David claims Tito was later persecuted by
paramilitaries and pushed out of office by corrupt officials. In a community
council with President Uribe on February 1, 2003, Tito repeated his earlier
statements and said he was going to be killed for what he had been reporting.

Three months later, on April 5, Tito was assassinated. Tito
left home saying he was going to attend a political meeting with senior
officials, but after the meeting he disappeared. On April 10, Tito’s body
was found on the road with signs of torture and multiple bullet wounds. He was
in a crucified position, with his mayor’s credentials on his head. In his
shoe, the family found a letter from Tito dated April 8 and addressed to
“commander Rodrigo” (known as “Cadena,” the local
paramilitary chief). In the letter, Tito begged for a meeting with him and
asked that Cadena spare his family.

“The disappointing thing is that all the politicians
my father had denounced were rewarded. One of the men he accused was named
military attaché in France.... Another was named ambassador to Chile....
No one is paying for their crimes,” said Juan David. President Uribe
appointed the former governor of Sucre, Salvador Arana, ambassador to Chile
shortly after the murder.

The day of his father’s murder, Juan David received
threats from people who said he had 24 hours to leave Sucre. He left for two
years, but returned and began working with the Movement of Victims of State
Crimes. Since then, he has been engaged in a persistent and frustrating
struggle to bring his father’s killers to justice. He has repeatedly
received threats.

They have tried to kill me in the street. They have
threatened me and persecuted me, and told me to leave the department or the
same thing that happened to my father would happen to me for continuing to
denounce the paramilitaries and working for justice. But I won’t leave
Sucre because I have to lift the flag that my father tried to lift and was
destroyed.[137]

Juan David says that 11 witnesses in the case have been
assassinated, there have been attempts on the lives of two others, one has
disappeared, and others have been threatened. In a recent message, Juan David
said that “the threats against me and my family have increased, in the
form of pamphlets, emails, and an attempt on my life that they tried to carry
out on March 27, [2009,] all this to keep us from continuing to press for our
right to justice.”[138]
Juan David believes that the men who tried to kill him in March were members of
the Paisas.[139]
A recent threat arrived by e-mail, in October of 2009, and it warned that if
Arana was convicted Juan David’s family would die.[140]

Nonetheless, six years after the murder, the Colombian
Supreme Court has convicted Arana of collaborating with paramilitaries and of
involvement in the murder of Tito Díaz, and has sentenced him to 40
years in prison.[141]
According to Juan David, other officials and paramilitaries who may have been
involved in the killing have yet to be tried.

Internal Displacement

Paramilitary groups are considered to have been responsible
for more displacement than any other single actor in Colombia—37 percent
according to a recent study done as part of the Colombian Constitutional
Court’s monitoring of the plight of displaced persons.[142]

The demobilization process did not result in a significant
and sustained decline in displacement, as one might have expected. On the
contrary, according to Social Action, in the years following the
demobilization, internal displacement rates went up in Colombia.

According to official figures, after dropping to 228,828 in
2004, the number of newly displaced persons went up each year until it hit
327,624 in 2007. The official 2008 numbers are a little lower, at 300,693, but
still substantially higher than at the start of the demobilization process. [143]

A prominent organization monitoring displacement in
Colombia, CODHES (Consultoria para los Derechos Humanos y el Desplazamiento),
reports different numbers, finding that around 380,863 people were displaced in
2008—a 24.47 percent increase over its number (305,966) for 2007.[144]

In statements to human rights groups in mid-2009, the director
of Social Action highlighted the fact that Social Action’s numbers for
2009 so far appeared to reflect a significant drop in displacement for the
year: as of September 30, it had registered 86,397 new cases for 2009.
Nonetheless, as of this writing it is too early to determine whether the 2009
numbers, once fully tallied, will show a drop in internal displacement.

The head of Social Action told Human Rights Watch that the
reasons for the rise in displacement, at least between 2006 and 2007, might
have included the victims’ “perception of violence” where
there was no real threat, and “processes of manual eradication of coca
crops, which led the [armed] groups to put pressure on the civilian population,
as well as territorial disputes [among armed groups].”[145]

CODHES, meanwhile, attributes the increase in displacement
through 2008 to many factors, but highlights in particular the growth of the
successor groups.

Whether or not the successor groups are the main cause of
the rise in displacement after 2004, it is clear that they are a significant
factor causing displacement. Human Rights Watch received many reports of
displacement by successor groups, usually due to threats. One woman described
her experience in the south of Cesar department:

I left because of a group called the Black Eagles. My two 11-year-olds
and another young boy had disappeared a week before. I looked for them... Then
a group appeared from the Black Eagles.... The group said “you have to
leave now or we will kill you.” My two kids were later found alive in
Cúcuta and are under government care... The day before the
disappearance, the boys had told me they had seen some men on a road dressed
strangely and in black, but they didn’t say anything. I guess that they
had my boys but turned them in because they were too young to be of use. The
other kid is still missing.... The people who asked us to leave the town were
dressed in black camouflage... Previously we had already been displaced by
paramilitaries.... They told me that if I continued to walk around with papers
saying I was displaced, they would kill me. I’m tired of moving around
all the time without peace.[146]

Another woman who had been displaced by the same group said:

[W]e were displaced from Puerto Rico by a group called the
Black Eagles. They said we had to collaborate with them or they would kill us.
The previous day they had already displaced people from nearby. They arrived on
August 30, [2008]... Men arrived at my house with large guns, camouflaged, and
in black. Ten men arrived. I’m a single mother and was very afraid, and I
ran with my girl. I thought they would kill me if I stayed. I was terrified....
I think they wanted the land and wanted me to collaborate, to work with them...
There are few police or military there, and one doesn’t file complaints
because of the fear. I left the farm and walked for nearly three days until I
arrived here.[147]

In fact, much of the displacement is occurring in regions
where successor groups are active. CODHES says there were 82 cases of group
displacement in 2008; the most affected departments were Nariño and
Chocó, where the successor groups are very active.[148]

According to the annual report by the International
Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), 66.5 percent of the displaced persons to
whom the ICRC provided assistance in 2008 had been displaced because of death
threats. Another 10.9 percent were displaced because of threats of forced
recruitment into armed groups.[149]

Regional Examples

In each of the four regions that we examined in detail for
this report, we found that successor groups had de facto control over
territory, towns, and neighborhoods, and committed frequent and serious abuses
against civilians by such groups. Our findings are described, by region, below.

Successor Groups in Medellín

“The dog that once bit us is now showing its
fangs.”

—Local official in Medellín

In Medellín, it is clear that the demobilization
process was incomplete, and that many persons who supposedly
demobilized—including the head of the main paramilitary group in
Medellín, Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, known as “Don
Berna”—continued controlling criminal activity in the city.

Yet for years, the Colombian media, national and local authorities,
and officials in the United States regularly cited Medellín as an
exemplary city when it came to paramilitary demobilization and violence
reduction.[150]
In fact, between 2006 and 2008 the city became a favorite stop for U.S.
congressional delegations arranged by the Office of the US Trade Representative
and Commerce Department to promote a free trade deal with Colombia.[151]

Indeed, Medellín had experienced a significant
decline in homicides between 2002 and 2007.[152]Yet as
explained in the following sections, the decline was largely attributable to
the fact that Don Berna held a monopoly over crime in the city, and was no
longer engaged in turf wars with other groups. But members of his
group—including supposedly demobilized individuals—continued
killing community leaders and threatening and extorting residents.

As Don Berna’s group has splintered due to infighting,
and as its control has been challenged by other successor groups coming into
the city from outside, Medellín is once again experiencing a rapid rise
in violence. Between 2008 and 2009, the homicide rate has more than doubled,
rising to 1,717 killings in the first ten months of the year (a rate of 74.1
homicides per 100,000 inhabitants).[153]
Internal displacement within the city has also more than doubled in the last
year. In a few cases, prosecutors in Medellín have attempted to
investigate the groups, but those investigations have been hampered by numerous
difficulties, including the lack of adequate protection for witnesses. In
addition, there have been serious allegations about toleration and, in one
case, links between some of these groups and certain state agents, including
the former chief prosecutor of Medellín, who is now under criminal
investigation.

In a September 2008 interview, the current mayor, Alonso
Salazar, said that the city was in a situation of “tension” and
facing serious challenges, as it was difficult to “maintain governability
with a phenomenon as destabilizing as drug trafficking.”[154]
Part of the problem, he recognized, was that sectors of the paramilitary
groups, including parts of their leadership, had continued engaging in criminal
activity.

An Imposed Peace

The apparent peace that Medellín experienced for a
few years was in part the result of Don Berna’s monopoly of crime in the
city. In fact, homicides started dropping in Medellín well before the
demobilization of the Cacique Nutibara Block in late 2003. The rate nearly
halved between 2002 and 2003. The drop appears to have been closely linked to
the defeat of the Metro Block of the AUC by Don Berna’s Cacique Nutibara Block,
as well as the expulsion of guerrilla units from the city by the Colombian military
and the paramilitaries.[155]By
the time of the demobilization of 2,033 persons said to be members of the
Granada Heroes (Heroes de Granada) Block in August 2005, the largest single
demobilization in Medellín, homicides were already hitting record lows.[156]
One low-level demobilized paramilitary told us, “when we demobilized, we
had already won, everything was already under control.”[157]

Human Rights Watch heard similar comments from leaders of
the Democracy Corporation (Corporación Democracia), an
organization of demobilized members of the Cacique Nutibara and Granada Heroes
Blocks through which the city regularly coordinated its interaction with
demobilized paramilitaries. Democracy Corporation leaders said it was their
“natural leader,” Don Berna, who brought peace to Medellín
after his group had “regulated” all the different gangs and armed
actors in the city, getting them to “stop killing each other.”[158]
In fact, they said that the Democracy Corporation had continued to report to
Don Berna while he was in prison awaiting sentencing benefits under the Justice
and Peace Law.

“In the city there was a winner who now exerts
hegemony,” said one official from the Permanent Human Rights Unit of Medellín’s
Personeríain 2007. “In the comunas [neighborhoods
on the hillsides of Medellín] and neighboring townships there is one
actor who has ... the capacity to impose his rules by coercion. It’s
threats, extortion... Sometimes they appear as an armed actor, others as a
social actor. They combine forms of activity.”[159]

Former Mayor Fajardo also recognized in a September 2007 interview
that paramilitaries retained power in Medellín after demobilization,
though he said his administration tried to break that power through investment
in reintegration:

There was a very powerful man with a group. We started to
change that power. For the majority, they start to have a relationship with the
city, psychologists, social workers... They start to distance themselves from
the group... There are some who are cheating ... about 10 percent... They still
have that power.... They’re probably charging [illegal] taxes... [But]
many of the kids don’t want that to happen ... they cooperate with
information.[160]

But while reintegration efforts in Medellín may have
helped a number of young men who participated in the demobilization ceremonies
(whether or not they were actually paramilitaries), many Medellín
residents continued to perceive paramilitaries or persons linked to them as a
very real threat. For example, one woman, who had in the past been a local
community leader in the Comuna 13 neighborhood and had been forcibly displaced
by paramilitaries in 2002, said she remained displaced because of the
paramilitaries’ continued control: “the paramilitaries are still
around there.... They’re still saying that if people return they will be
killed.”[161]

These fears were well grounded. Despite the horrific record
of violence in Medellín during the Cacique Nutibara’s takeover of
the city, only 23 members of the Cacique Nutibara Block are on the list of
paramilitaries who applied for benefits under the Justice and Peace Law.[162]
Of the 2,033 members of the Heroes de Granada Block officially said to have
demobilized, only 75 applied for Justice and Peace Law benefits.[163]
Thus, the persons responsible for much of the massive violence that Medellín
experienced until 2002 (and after) were not held accountable as part of the
demobilization process.

Immediately after the Cacique Nutibara demobilization,
experts reported that Don Berna continued to control crime in the city—to
such a degree that when he was arrested for the alleged murder of a congressman,
local transportation ground to a halt for several hours.[164]

Close associates of Don Berna are suspected of having taken
over the day-to-day operations of what is known as the Envigado Office—an
organization that provides assassination and enforcement services to organized
crime in Medellín, and which the government had claimed was demobilizing
as part of the Heroes de Granada Block.[165] “In one way or
another, the paramilitary chiefs of Antioquia retain power,” said the
newspaper El Espectador in February of 2007. “And in this
scenario, the majority of roads lead you to a single person: Diego Fernando
Murillo Bejarano, commonly known as ... Don Berna.”[166]

Continuing Control

Successor groups have continued exerting control over many
neighborhoods in Medellín after the demobilization. This control has
been expressed in killings and threats against community leaders, extortion of
local businesses, the “punishment” through beatings of those who do
not comply, and a monopoly over crime in the neighborhood.

In some neighborhoods the local “coordinators” of
demobilized paramilitaries—who are themselves often demobilized local
commanders—did not limit themselves to coordinating activities related to
demobilization, but rather continued acting as local authorities, whose orders are
backed by force. One demobilized man said that the coordinators viewed it as
part of their job to “punish” the demobilized and to “kick
them around a bit if they don’t pay attention.”[167]This
form of enforcement also applied to “other persons in the
community.”[168]The
same individual said that there were groups in his neighborhood that included
demobilized individuals and that “still [went] to extort people.”[169]

Another demobilized man said that “if someone does something
bad, like stealing ... the [coordinators] scold him and if it happens a lot,
they might take stronger measures like hitting him, kicking him... In the neighborhood
everyone has to go in the same direction.”[170]

One now deceased community leader, Alexander
Pulgarín, told Human Rights Watch in 2007 that a member of the Democracy
Corporation, Antonio López, also known as “Job,” had ordered
killings of coordinators in his neighborhood who didn’t “copy him”—that
is, who did not follow orders.[171]
He said each time a new coordinator arrived the Democracy Corporation member
would intimidate or buy him off.[172]
“Immediately, a dead king is a replaced king,”he said. “This is peace with a
gun to your throat, and whoever steps out of the corral, loses.”[173]

At the time, Pulgarín had been running for the
community action council, and he said Job had pressed him to be “their
councilman.” According to Pulgarín, “he said ‘we want
you to be with us... I will give you a car, bodyguards, and three million
[pesos] a month... I will give you a logistical structure.’” When Pulgarín
refused, he said he began receiving threats.[174]

Another person who does extensive community work in the
Comuna 8 neighborhood agreed with Pulgarín’s general account,
describing in mid-2008 how the neighborhood had come under the control of Job
and another member of the Democracy Corporation, John William López,
known as “Memín.” Both men, he said, had been managing all
organized crime in the neighborhood.[175]
In some sectors of the neighborhood, he said, armed men were engaging in
extortion. “They continue with intimidation and punishments ... saying
that snitches deserve to be disemboweled.”[176]

Memín in fact won election as the president of the
community action council of Villatina.[177]
In July 2008, Job was assassinated in an upscale restaurant in the Las Palmas
district, on the road from Rionegro airport into Medellín.[178]
And in March 2009, Memín was convicted of forced displacement, voter
constrainment, and conspiracy.[179]
Four witnesses were assassinated during the trial, in which Memín also
accused Mayor Alonso Salazar of accepting paramilitary support in his run for
office (Salazar has denied the allegations).[180]
Later in the year, Alexander Pulgarín, who had also testified against
Memín, was also assassinated.[181]

Human Rights Watch received multiple reports of local
successor groups’ extortion of local businesses and residents,
displacement of those who did not follow their orders, recruitment of children,
and rape, in addition to drug trafficking and other organized criminal
activity. “They’re grabbing kids who are eight or nine years old...
If the kids don’t get involved, they threaten them,” one community
leader in Comuna 13 said. “They’re still charging vacunas [taxes],
threatening people who don’t do what they say ... beating them in front
of everybody.”[182]

The groups have engaged in assassinations and threats, often
targeting community leaders. In one case, the Personería’s
Permanent Human Rights Unit reported that “the president of a community
action council was forced to resign due to pressure from a well known
demobilized individual.”[183]
Elsewhere, the unit reported that “in one of the community action
councils (JACs) they replaced the whole council with people who did their
bidding.”[184]

“We’re afraid,” said a group of community
leaders from the Northeast Zone of Medellín in 2008. “We
don’t know how it’s going to blow up.... The ones who move the
strings ... find their instrument [in] the local gangs but the ones who move
this war are external actors.”[185]

In August 2006, assassins killed Haider Ramírez, a
popular community leader from Comuna 13. A few months later, the Early Warning
System of the Ombudsman’s Office prepared a “Risk Report”
about Comuna 13.[186]
The risk report warned about the threat posed by the existence of “armed
groups derived from the demobilized of the Cacique Nutibara and Héroes
de Granada Blocks, as well as the Black Eagles emerging criminal groups.”[187]
It noted the risk that the groups could commit homicides, force people from
their homes, use threats and force to recruit new members, and generate terror
in the civilian population.[188]
It said the murder of Haider Ramírez was “a premeditated act
designed to create blanket fear in the area, especially in this year of
municipal and regional elections, and [it represented] the elimination of ...
social leaders who refuse to participate in the established order.”[189]

But the mayor’s office rejected the risk report,
stating in its April 10, 2007, response that “in Comuna 13 there is no
armed conflict; there are criminal gangs who are responsible for the majority
of the crimes committed there. These groups are not part of any military
structure, because in Comuna 13 there is no organized presence of guerrillas or
paramilitaries.”[190]

Two weeks later, on April 23, 2007, Judith Vergara, a 33-year-old
community leader from the El Pesebre neighborhood in Comuna XIII, and a mother
of four, was shot to death by an unidentified assailant while riding on a bus
from her neighborhood to work.[191]
According to Luis Fernando Quijano, who worked closely with her, Judith, and
one other member of her group had been detained and threatened by
paramilitaries in July of 2005. Quijano says that Judith had been planning to
run for higher political office, but that a few days before her death she had
told him she was afraid of doing so because of the problems she had had with
the paramilitaries in her part of town.[192]

According to a representative from the Ombudsman’s
Office, “the two killings [Vergara’s and Ramirez’s] were
linked... [T]hey had both had problems with the demobilized.”[193]

Mery del Socorro Naranjo and María del Socorro
Mosquera, who held local office in Comuna 13, said they had come under pressure
from persons linked to paramilitaries to approve projects, using resources from
local budgets, that favored the paramilitaries.[194]

Another community leader from the Northeast Zone of
Medellín said she had to give up her political work due to the pressure
from the successor groups: “They threatened me and told me I had to leave
the council. The pain it gives me is that they barred me from doing public
service for a long time.” She also said the groups pressed the community
to vote for their candidates for the community action council: “During
the election they go door to door, to the most vulnerable people ... and tell
them they have to vote for this list.”[195]

“The idea is to take control of local budgets through
the neighborhood action councils,” said an official from the
Medellín Personería’s Human Rights Unit, “they
also infiltrate local educational institutions, pressuring school officials to
give them contracts.”[196]

Representatives of CEDECIS, an organization working on
education in poor areas of Medellín, told Human Rights Watch that in
July of 2007 members of the Democracy Corporation appeared at one of
CEDECIS’ schools. They said the men pressured school officials to send
students to downtown Medellín the following week so they could
participate in a celebration on the streets honoring “Don Berna”
when he was taken to the city to give his “confession” to
prosecutors.[197]Previously,
when paramilitary commander “El Alemán” had been in Medellín
for his confession, hundreds of people had “taken over the streets”
to cheer for him in front of the Prosecutors’ Offices.[198]
“They asked the director how many busloads he could fill [with
students],” said the CEDECIS representatives. “When the director
refused, they began making threats, saying that the school was worthless [and]
that it has never supported them.”[199]

Shortly afterwards, the CEDECIS officials issued a press
release about what had happened, which they believe resulted in city officials
preventing the Democracy Corporation from holding a large event for “Don
Berna’s” confession as originally planned.[200]
The Democracy Corporation responded with a press release stating that “it
had never had to force any person to attend the events expressing solidarity
with [Don Berna],” that allegations that they had been pressing persons
to attend the events were false, and that those who made them were
“unscrupulous, ill-meaning persons who are against the peace
process.”[201]
CEDECIS officials say the school director received several more threats in
later weeks.[202]

Threats by groups or persons who appear to be linked to
paramilitaries also targeted the Medellín Personería’s
Human Rights Unit. In one situation two staff members who were carrying out
fieldwork in Comuna 1 had to seek police protection when a motorcyclist started
following them around; on another occasion, a member of the Democracy
Corporation publicly accused the unit of being a “guerrilla front.”[203]

The Youth Network of Medellín, a group of people
under age 27 committed to non-violence, said that they had received threats
after holding a concert outside the Democracy Corporation Offices. “A few
hours after the concert, someone stabbed and killed a young guy at a nearby
park... Two weeks later ... threats arrived by email telling us never to do the
concert again. A list appeared with eight people from our organization. The
people on the list were followed and photographed.... A month later a threat
arrived at a ... newspaper that we worked with. The [new] emails were similar
to the threats we had received except that the authors identified themselves as
anti-guerrilla groups and not the Black Eagles.”[204]
The youth organization continues doing its work, “but there is still a
lot of fear.”[205]

In December of 2007, MAPP officials reported that a
representative in the MAPP local office in Medellín had received a
serious death threat.[206]
A motorcyclist had entered the office and said that the local office director should
no longer show up there or she would be killed.[207]

Power Struggles

In recent years, the power of Don Berna’s criminal
structures has been challenged by other successor groups and by infighting
within the Envigado Office.[208]

Two of Don Berna’s alleged associates, Gustavo Upegui
and Daniel Alberto Mejía (a.k.a. “Danielito”), were killed
in what appears to have been a power struggle within the organization.[209]
Colombian National Police Chief General Oscar Naranjo stated in 2007 that the
vice-president of the Democracy Corporation, Carlos Mario Aguilar, known by the
alias “Rogelio,” had become the new head of the Envigado Office.[210]

“There are structures that at first ‘copied’
[followed the orders of] Berna but due to the disappearances of Danielito and
Upegui, new power structures are starting to appear to seek their own
benefit,” said one official from the Ombudsman’s Office in
Medellín, in late 2007. “Rogelio has some control... [S]ome say
that he’s working without Berna, others that they’re together.”[211]
In a February 2008 interview, General Naranjo said that “[s]ince about
eight months ago we noticed an effort from Urabá to get to
Medellín through a group of assassins to force the submission of the
Envigado Office,” which had resulted in killings.[212]
Naranjo asserted that the Envigado Office appeared to have withdrawn and
fractured, while other groups were restructuring.[213]

In May 2008 the Colombian government extradited Don Berna to
the United States. “From then on, everything changed,” said General
Roberto León Riaño, then director of the Carabineers unit of the
police.[214]
He explained that a confrontation broke out between Don Mario (of Urabá)
and Rogelio. A couple of months later, Rogelio, who was once an investigator
for the Office of the Attorney General, is reported to have turned himself in
to US authorities.[215]

Since then, the Medellín groups have seen a
succession of leaders—several of whom are supposedly demobilized
paramilitaries, and some of whom have been arrested or killed.

For example, police arrested John William López
Echevarría (also known as “Memín”), a supposedly
demobilized member of the Cacique Nutibara block with whom Human Rights Watch
had met at the offices of the Democracy Corporation in mid-2007. As previously
explained, Memín was convicted of forced displacement, interfering with
electoral processes by force (voter constrainment), and conspiracy (the charge
usually applied to paramilitaries) in Comuna 8.[216]

Human Rights Watch had previously received reports that
Memín was the right-hand man of Antonio López (known as
“Job”), a senior Cacique Nutibara leader and Democracy Corporation
member who worked closely with Don Berna. In mid-2008 a major scandal erupted
when Semana magazine reported about Job’s meeting with senior
advisors to President Uribe at the presidential palace, during which Job
offered them material to smear Supreme Court assistant justice Iván
Velásquez. Job was assassinated a few weeks later.[217]

Rising Abuses

The infighting and fracturing
of the Medellín groups have been accompanied by rapidly rising violence in
Medellín. In the first 10 months of 2009 there were 1,717 homicides,
according to the Medellín Instituto de Medicina Legal (Forensic Medicine
Institute). That is more than a 100 percent increase over the 830 cases in the
same period in 2008.[218]

Many of the victims are
supposedly demobilized paramilitaries. According to the Medellín
Personería’s Human Rights Unit, 71
demobilized paramilitaries were killed in Medellín in 2008. Another 125
were killed through November 17, 2009.[219]

The number of persons who are becoming newly displaced
within the city has also climbed. The Medellín Personería’s
Human Rights Unit reports that in the first 10 months of 2009 it received
reports of the displacement of 2,103 persons within the city of Medellín
alone—nearly tripling the number of reports the Personería had
received the previous year.[220]

The Personería told Human Rights Watch that, in their
statements, the people who were forced from their homes in the first half of
2009 identified the following as perpetrators: paramilitary groups, 32 percent
of the cases; gang members, 29 percent of the cases; unidentified armed groups,
24 percent of the cases; and demobilized persons, 10 percent of the cases. Only
four percent attributed their displacement to common crime, one percent to
guerrillas, and one percent to the army. In their statements victims point out
that there is no real difference among many of these groups, due to the
similarity in their behavior and the fact that their members move easily from
one group to another. The Personería noted that many of the victims
spoke of the “boss” who ran things in the neighborhood, and said
there were similarities in the patterns of control and enforcement, suggesting
the existence of broader hierarchical networks. The victims repeatedly reported
that the groups were exerting social control, engaging in social cleansing,
recruiting young men and children, and engaging in extortion and threats.[221]

Displacement from the Pablo Escobar Neighborhood

Between late 2008 and July 2009, more than 40 residents of
the Pablo Escobar neighborhood (a small area covering only a few blocks) of Medellín
became displaced as a result of threats and killings by a group run by former
members of the AUC’s Cacique Nutibara and Heroes de Granada Blocks.[222]
Human Rights Watch interviewed many of the displaced community members, who
described strict and violent control of their activities by the group, which
they believed had links to the Envigado Office.

One woman described how the group killed her son in May
2009: “When the war among the demobilized began, the gangs in
Medellín were left without a law or leader, and in November 2008 they
began to kill boys they weren’t allowed to kill before... On February 28,
we received a threat, and [my son] got us a house so we could hide in another
neighborhood.”[223]
But the group tracked them down at their new home. “They were waiting for
him on the patio. They killed him. I ran out in the middle of the shooting,
they shot at me and at my little girl. I recognized one of the boys from the
neighborhood,” she said. She said the group had become angry at them
because she had started testifying about a crime she had witnessed. “If
you stay you’re with them, and if you leave you’re an enemy because
you’re a witness,” said another family member.[224]
“It’s not fair that everybody pretends to be blind [to the crimes
that are committed],” added the mother. “The gang has said that
nobody can leave the neighborhood or they’ll chop them up... No
authorities have responded and [the gang] was acting freely, and I said no more.”[225]

Several young men from the community said that they had
received threats from the group stating that the men should either join them or
leave. “In Medellín all the neighborhoods are hot. We have no
security,” said one.[226]

“They’ve killed a lot of people, you see them
beating people to death. They make the prettiest girls, who are 12 or 13 years
old, be theirs. And if the girls don’t accept, they rape and kill
them,” said another. Several community members described cases of young
girls who had been raped, usually in a place they called the
“escuelita,” an abandoned school. “Every Saturday they party
and whatever girl they grab goes there. It’s a small hell there. They
torture people,” said another man.[227]

Another woman described how her son had been killed and
dismembered on April 17, 2009. “He said he was going to have lunch with
me ... but he didn’t arrive.... The police called me to recognize the
body.... They pulled a sack out of the trunk of the car [with his body in
it].” Her son had been a taxi driver, and she thinks he was killed by the
group because he wouldn’t work with them. “I started receiving
threats, asking ‘How long are you staying, or are you going to go out
like your son?’”[228]

According to several residents, members of the local police
tolerate the groups. “The police are afraid of them, and since they get
paid off, even though [police personnel] have been changed five times,
it’s always the same,” said one community member. The group also
manages the drug business in the neighborhood and forces taxi drivers to carry
drugs for them, several community members told us. Some residents said that in
recent months, the group had started working for a new leader, known as
“Chaparro,” who originally was part of the Envigado Office and who
they claimed now controls several groups in the Comuna 9 area of
Medellín. “We can no longer live in Medellín. They have
tentacles everywhere,” said one resident.[229]

The displaced people from the Pablo Escobar neighborhood had
no place to go. The human rights personero of Medellín helped make
arrangements so they could stay at a municipal shelter for displaced persons.
However, many expressed dissatisfaction because they could not work while
staying at the shelter, lest they be identified and killed.[230]
One displaced man, Esneider Camilo Higuita, who decided to abandon the shelter
was later assassinated in the Pablo Escobar neighborhood, on September 12,
2009.[231]

The persons at the shelter have faced uncertainty about
their living situation. The prosecutor handling the investigation of the
group’s abuses has repeatedly asked the Office of the Attorney
General’s witness protection program to offer them protection, and Human
Rights Watch sent a letter to the office supporting those requests.[232]
But as of this writing the office had only approved protection requests for two
community members. Meanwhile, Medellín municipal authorities claim that
they are not responsible for protecting the community, because the displaced
residents belong in the witness protection program. The city continues to allow
them to remain at the shelter, but says that it is running out of resources.[233]

The investigation of the abuses in the Pablo Escobar
neighborhood is being handled by a specialized prosecutor, who forms part of a
group in the Attorney General’s Office charged with investigating successor
groups. In October 2009, the prosecutor obtained the arrest of 18 men whom the
community had identified as members of the gang responsible for abuses.
However, three other men against whom arrest warrants are pending remain at
large.

Successor Groups in the Urabá Region

The region around the Gulf of Urabá, which includes
portions of the departments of Chocó and Antioquia, has historically
suffered some of the worst atrocities in Colombia’s internal armed conflict.
During the late 1990s, paramilitaries took over much of the region, operating
with the toleration and even collusion of sectors of the 17th
Brigade of the Army, including, according to multiple sources, General Rito
Alejo del Rio.[234]
Military and paramilitary operations in the region led to massive displacement
of civilians, including many Afro-Colombians who abandoned their traditional
lands.

The region is a strategic corridor for the movement of drugs
and weapons because it is on the Pacific coast. It also has fertile land that
was historically used to grow bananas. After the displacement of civilians,
private companies and landowners—some with allegedly close links to the
AUC—took over wide swaths of traditional Afro-Colombian land. They
planted African palm, which produces profitable palm oil, and have also sought
to exploit the land for lumber.[235]

Starting in the mid-1990s, the Urabá region of Chocó
came under the control of the AUC’s Elmer Cárdenas Block, under
the command of Freddy Rendón (also known as “El Alemán”).
As described by the investigative news website VerdadAbierta.com, which has
conducted extensive research on paramilitaries’ history:

[El Alemán’s] men killed and displaced
hundreds of indigenous people and Afro-Colombians who refused to sell their
lands for palm cultivation. The communities of Curvaradó, Cacarica and
Domingodó, speak of at least 22,000 hectares that men from the Elmer
Cárdenas block took from them. The area of Belen de Bajirá in
Mutatá also has thousands of hectares planted with palm, which are also
said to have been taken by the Elmer Cárdenas Block, and by Vicente
Castaño, after they forced hundreds of peasants to turn over their
territory. Yet all these takings have been presented by “El Alemán”
and the men in his block as a social project ... that is designed to generate
productive enterprises in remote areas. In reality, it’s part of a
strategy of repopulation and territorial control that has as its axis a lumber
and palm agroindustry that was designed by Vicente Castaño.[236]

In recent years, some of the displaced persons have sought
to return and reclaim their lands, in some cases by creating
“humanitarian zones”—de facto small communities where they
have settled, on or near the land they used to farm.

In 2006 the Elmer Cárdenas Block supposedly
demobilized. However, almost immediately a new group run by El
Alemán’s brother, Daniel Rendón (“Don Mario”),
who had also supposedly demobilized, started operating in the region and
engaging in behavior very similar to that of the Elmer Cárdenas Block.

Continued Control and Abuses

Don Mario presented himself as the true heir to Carlos
Castaño, a prominent former AUC leader (reportedly killed by his brother
Vicente Castaño) who frequently portrayed the paramilitaries as engaged
in an ideological fight against the guerrillas, and was responsible for
horrific atrocities. Don Mario’s group used different names, including
“Heroes de Castaño” (“Castaño’s
Heroes”); “Autodefensas Gaitanistas de Colombia” (Gaitanista
Self-Defense Forces of Colombia); and Black Eagles. The police call them
“the ones from Urabá,” while others call them the “Urabeños.”
In 2007 and 2008 the group appeared to grow rapidly and there were reports that
it had started to have a presence in Medellín, where it was challenging Don
Berna’s groups.

In April 2009, the police arrested Don Mario.[237]
But others took over control of his organization.

Human Rights Watch visited two humanitarian zones—areas
where displaced persons have settled, and which they claim as the territory
that was taken from them—in Urabá, both along the Curvaradó
river in the state of Chocó, and spoke with persons from other parts of Urabá
who traveled to meet with us. Residents described a situation of constant
threats by local armed groups, who residents believed to be serving the
interests of some of the businesses and landowners who wanted to keep the Afro-Colombians
from seeking recovery of their land.

Police sources we spoke with recognize that the successor
groups in the Urabá region are closely involved in the palm business,
and could be considered “private armies,” one of the officials
noting that this phenomenon could also be seen elsewhere in the country, such
as in the plains states.[238]

Generally, residents said the groups operating in the region
identified themselves as the “Black Eagles” and were part of the
structure that was previously managed by Don Mario.

“They have a very fierce control. In Brisas, Pavarandó,
Curvaradó, Mutatá, wherever you go, they have control,”
said one resident.[239]
Residents described multiple checkpoints by the successor groups all over the
region. “There’s a mobile checkpoint before leaving Mutatá
to join the central road, where they impose a tax [vacuna] on all
vehicles with loads,” said another. In addition to extorting such
payments from community members and local businesses, most residents believe
that the groups are making money through palm plantations and drug trafficking.
“The guys take care of the palm crops. They’re part of the same
structure [that existed before],” said a former national official who
used to work in the area.[240]

One humanitarian zone that has been especially victimized
recently is Caño Manso, along the Curvaradó river. On October 14,
2008, community members claim, the Black Eagles assassinated community leader
Gualberto Hoyos of Caño Manso. “They killed him one block from the
Caño Manso school,” said a resident, who charged that the Black
Eagles were working closely with local businessmen and landowners.[241]
According to the Inter-American Commission, “after the killing, the
aggressors took the community’s cell phones to leave them incommunicado.
The police only arrived at the location five hours after the events, and the
army arrived seven hours after [the killing].”[242]

During a Human Rights Watch visit to the Curvaradó
region on May 30, 2009, residents reported that there was a conflict between
residents of the Caño Manso humanitarian zone and the administrator of
the land for one of the persons who took it over, backed by the army.
“The administrator said that we had to leave the humanitarian zone
whether we wanted to or not. One of our friends was threatened. The army was
present, they saw [men] cut the fence [that the displaced community had built
to mark their territory] around the Caño Manso humanitarian zone,”
said one resident. Another added that “we’re worried because we’re
getting threats from the Black Eagles. There were two men from the Black Eagles
there... They took video and photos... The ones who took the fence down work
for the businessmen.”[243]

Threatened and Kidnapped for Defending the Community

Yimmy Armando Jansasoy, a young member of the Justice and Peace
Inter-Ecclesiastical Commission, a non-governmental organization that works
closely with the Afro-Colombian communities along the Curvaradó river,
was forced to flee the region after being threatened and kidnapped by the
“Black Eagles” in 2008. While in hiding, he told us his story:

Starting on August 24 we began to receive threats from the
Black Eagles... The whole team at Curvaradó, eight human rights
defenders, received threats that ordered us to leave the zone to stay alive....
In that area there are many interests... We help communities defend what is
theirs through their ancestry.

[The threats] really affected our organization’s
activities.... On September 3, I left to make some rounds and was abducted by
four armed men. They put me in a truck, face down, with my hands tied behind my
back. They intimidated me with a gun. They ordered me to give information about
my co-workers and their families... I thought they were going to kill me
because the threats had been serious. They said that by working for the
organization, all I was asking for was death... [But they eventually released
me.]

From that moment, I had to abandon the territory... On
September 6 I received more threats on my cell phone. My colleague also
received a threat on the same day... We understood that we were dealing with a
big structure.

We saw that the groups act with impunity, and that’s
what hurts. We saw that the human rights organizations are in danger because it
is a big and strong structure... They are paramilitaries. They demobilized, but
the demobilization was a worldwide publicity act. In reality, groups kept the
same structure. They keep killing and exploiting the communities. They continue
their presence within the community. The state does nothing to end these
structures. The paramilitaries are hidden in their activities. They can’t
be as visible as in the late [1990s], but the control continues. They
assassinate community leaders, those who speak, they exploit the communities that
work, the person that works. They exercise control over the territory with the
justification that they are against the guerrillas, but they really are
treating the communities as guerrillas, communities who have nothing to do with
the national conflict... They do it to control territory, obtain wealth, and
impose their agribusiness. They want to achieve a high economic level, but at
the expense of blood, and the lives of communities. They terrorize communities
so that they abandon their lands... The demobilization may have made the
paramilitaries less visible, but paramilitary and military control under the
same structure has continued.”[244]

Successor Groups in Meta

The states stretching east of Bogotá to the
Venezuelan border—Meta, Vichada, Casanare, and Guaviare—and known
collectively as “los llanos” or the plains, were among the worst
hit by AUC violence. The territory has always been valuable for cultivation of
coca as well as for moving drugs across the border, and also for the cultivation
of biofuels, rubber, lumber, and natural resources, including oil and mining.

The plains states also present a clear example of
continuation between the former AUC paramilitaries and their successor groups.
The most active group there now, the ERPAC, is a large faction of the Centauros
Block of the AUC, which remained active under the command of Pedro Oliverio
Guerrero (Cuchillo), despite his supposed demobilization.

The FARC has maintained a presence in the region for years,
and the plains—especially Meta—have a significant military
presence.

In the early part of this decade, the plains became the
stage for infighting among different paramilitary groups, which were each
seeking control over territory. On one hand, the Autodefensas Campesinas del
Casanare engaged in a bloody struggle against the Centauros Block of the AUC
(under the control of Miguel Arroyave) in 2003-2004. The Centauros Block
prevailed, and its leader, Miguel Arroyave, participated in demobilization
negotiations in Ralito until he was assassinated in 2004, as a result of an
internal struggle within the Centauros Block. That block was divided into two
factions: the Héroes del Llano (Heroes of the Plains), led by
Jesús María Pirabán (Pirata), and the Héroes del
Guaviare (Heroes of Guaviare), led by Pedro Oliverio Guerrero (Cuchillo).[245]
Officials claim that Cuchillo was responsible for Arroyave’s death.[246]
Both Cuchillo and Pirata entered the demobilization process, but Cuchillo never
turned himself in.

The Rise of ERPAC or the “Cuchillos”

Starting in 2007 a fight
broke out over control of the plains between Cuchillo’s group and still
active factions of other groups from the region. A risk report from the Early
Warning System of the Ombudsman’s Office warned, in November 2007, that:

The non-demobilized Guaviare Block [a faction of the
Centauros Block of the AUC]..., under the command of Pedro Oliverio Guarrero
(“Cuchillo”) has constituted the group of the “Cuchillos,"
which has gradually been consolidating its control in Meta, Vichada, and
Guaviare in the confrontation it is carrying out against the paramilitary group
of the so-called “Paisas” or “Macacos.” As the group of
the “Cuchillos” advances, it is also strengthening its presence in
areas disputed with the FARC, stimulated by the resources of coca and by the
forced taking of vast extensions of land..., they are establishing themselves
violently on communities considered supportive of the guerrillas, a
counterinsurgency strategy that accentuates the brutality of the human rights
violations.[247]

Cuchillo’s people prevailed around October of 2007,
and his group took control over much of the region, though Human Rights Watch
received reports that other smaller groups operate there as well. Another actor
operating in the region is the drug trafficker known as El Loco Barrera, who
several sources—including the police—said was operating with
Cuchillo.[248]

Government officials, nonprofit organization leaders, and
church and community leaders repeatedly told Human Rights Watch that Cuchillo
moves freely throughout the plains, despite the strong presence of the military.
While the police report that ERPAC has 770 troops under its command, the news
media has reported that the National Intelligence Service (the DAS) and the
Office of the Attorney General’s Criminal Investigator Unit (the CTI) put
the number at more than 1,200; other sources estimate it reaches as high as
2,500-3,000.[249]
According to the regional ombudsman, in March 2009:

This territory is dominated by Cuchillo, who is in a
process of expansion, taking the south of state and moving to Guaviare and
Vichada. His presence is similar to that of the paramilitaries... He has a
clear presence in Puerto Lleras, Puerto Rico, and Vistahermosa, with control
over people. There’s no question it’s Cuchillo... It has a counterinsurgent
element. There are confrontations between paramilitaries and guerrillas between
Mapiripán and Puerto Gaitan. They have more than 1,000 members.

He added that Cuchillo is actively recruiting troops,
including minors, in cities. “He’s offering 800,000 to 1 million
pesos ... especially in Villavicencio.”[250]

Abuses against Civilians and Counterinsurgency Activity

Human Rights Watch visited sectors of Meta, including Puerto
Rico, Vistahermosa, Granada, and the capital, Villavicencio. Puerto Rico and Vistahermosa
have a strong presence of the Colombian army, with checkpoints along the roads
and large military bases. Yet Human Rights Watch received multiple reports of
successor groups, apparently under Cuchillo’s command, operating in the
area, threatening and killing civilians. In the municipality of Vistahermosa,
in particular, residents consistently reported that men calling themselves the
“Black Eagles,” who said they worked for Cuchillo, were operating
in the region and threatening civilians. In an October 2008 follow-up note to
its risk report, the EWS warned of:

the consolidation of the expansion project of the
paramilitary group known as the “Cuchillos” ... in a strategy that
has focused on cutting the territorial, economic, and transit circuit considered
strategic by the FARC fronts that maintain influence in rural areas of Puerto
Rico and Vistahermosa, with the similar objective of controlling zones of coca
production and trade. This has been reflected in a spiral of violence against
the civilian population including threats, selective killings, forced
displacement, recruitment or illicit use of children and adolescents, and intimidation
and terror, especially against the leaders of the community action councils and
peasant associations which are declared as military objectives by this armed
group.[251]

A state official in Vistahermosa said that Cuchillo’s
people had begun entering the area in significant numbers in October 2008.[252]

Vistahermosa residents consistently said that there was a
group that answered to Cuchillo in the region, that it was threatening and
killing people, and that its members often accused residents of being
guerrillas, or spoke of their pursuit of guerrillas.

For example, residents of the town of Santo Domingo, near
Vistahermosa, Meta, said that members of successor groups who sometimes called
themselves Black Eagles, but who worked for Cuchillo, had arrived in their town
in late 2008. The members had forced coca growers to sell to them, and were
also threatening people, forcing the community to feed them and killing people.
According to one community member: “it’s over control of territory.
They’re from the south of Bolivar [department] ... and they say they work
for Cuchillo. They dress in black. The army is there but does nothing.”[253]

Another resident said “there’s a lot of
paramilitarism there ... They’re constantly rotating—15 to 20 of
them.” The man had previously left the neighboring town of El Tigre
because armed men came in one night and took people. “This is
counterinsurgency: they said it there—that everything that smells like a
guerrilla collaborator, they will kill. They say it in front of the people....
Those communities had been managed by guerrillas for many years.”[254]

Similarly, in Balconcitos, another small town in
Vistahermosa, a woman said:

We lived under the pressure of the guerrillas [and] then
the army came. [It left] and then the paramilitaries arrived in November 2008...
When the paramilitaries arrived in November they said they were self-defense
forces. They entered houses by force and said people had to let them stay....
Eight people were displaced. [The paramilitaries] didn’t do much. They
would arrive and ask how many guerrilla troops had been there, what they were
doing. They left on December 22 and the army arrived on the 24th. We
didn’t tell the army... They say they’re with the army and their
boss will know if someone talks about them... It’s the law of silence.[255]

Another woman who lived in Balconcitos said she had left
“because the paramilitaries arrived and put two people in each house.
They held meetings... The ones in Balconcitos said they were paramilitaries who
worked for Cuchillo. That’s why many people left. A neighbor told us
about a list that we were on, so we left.”[256]

“Cuchillo’s men came through the community. They
call themselves the Black Eagles,” said a woman who had been displaced
from La Cooperativa, Vistahermosa. “They said that anything that smells
like guerrillas should leave the region. People were afraid and started abandoning
town. There were lots of threats from Cuchillo’s men, against the
Community Action Council and others.” The woman said she had left because
she had heard that she was on a list that Cuchillo’s people had put
together of 50 targets for assassination in Piñalito, Santo Domingo, la
Cooperativa, El Tigre, Puerto Toledo, and Villa La Paz.

In Caño Amarillo, a resident said that successor
groups had come into town and were extorting people: “A lot of unknown
people arrive ... and they don’t come to work. They arrive more when
public security forces are near. A few days ago four armed guys arrived in
Caño Amarillo, and the security forces were near... They’re doing
‘cleansing’ of guerrilla redoubts. Last year there were threats
against people who were accused of collaborating with guerrillas.”[257]

A resident of Mata de Bambú, Vistahermosa, said the
groups called themselves Black Eagles and were uniformed. “They go in
groups of 150 or so and camp in the mountains.... They asked us if we had seen
the guerrillas.”[258]

On the basis of risk reports by the Ombudsman’s
Office, an early warning was issued to cover the municipalities of
Vistahermosa, Puerto Lleras, and Puerto Rico. But an official said that the
warning was later lifted because “the Ministry of Defense complained ... and
the departmental government opposed it. There was a meeting of the
Interinstitutional Committee of Early Warnings where they decided to eliminate
the warning, but it wasn’t because of lack of evidence.”[259]

Successor Groups in Nariño

The southwestern border state of Nariño is suffering
from widespread violence that is taking a heavy human rights and humanitarian
toll. FARC and ELN guerrillas, the army and navy, and successor groups to the
paramilitaries are all active, as are various drug-trafficking groups. In 2008,
according to the national Human Rights Observatory, there were 723 homicides in
the state and 23,604 persons were displaced.[260]
While these official numbers are among the highest in the country, the real
numbers are likely much higher. According to local officials and international
observers, the numbers of homicides and displaced persons are dramatically
underreported, due to difficulties accessing the region, citizens’ fear
of reporting abuses, and reports that armed actors often seek to hide bodies by
dismembering them, burying them in common graves, or throwing them in rivers.[261]

Nariño is a primarily rural, agricultural state,
flanked by a long coastline to the west and the Andes mountain range along the
east. Its location and geographic conditions make it a strategic corridor for
the transportation of drugs, with transport routes running both out to its
seaports and through poorly controlled border crossings with Ecuador. Coca is
also cultivated in the state, and substantial aerial fumigation has been
conducted with Plan Colombia funds provided by the United States. It has large
indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities, which have been severely affected by
the violence. Nariño is also a resource-rich region, with substantial
fertile land with potential for cultivation of industrial crops like African
palm, as well as for mining in the mountains.

Demobilization of the Liberators of the South
Paramilitary Block

The main paramilitary group that operated in Nariño
was the Liberators of the South Block (Bloque Libertadores del Sur or BLS),
which was part of the larger Central Bolivar Block (Bloque Central Bolivar or
BCB). The BCB operated in many regions around the country under the command of
Carlos Mario Jiménez Naranjo (“Macaco”). The brothers Rodrigo
Pérez Alzate (“Julián Bolívar”) and Guillermo
Pérez Alzate (“Pablo Sevillano”) were also important
commanders of the BLS and BCB.

According to one demobilized BLS commander, the BLS first
entered Nariño with the support of the Boyacá Battalion of the
army in 2002, and the BLS conducted joint operations with the battalion.[262]

The BLS was heavily involved in the drug trade in
Nariño. News reports cite one witness—a retired army lieutenant
who claims to have worked closely with the BLS and BCB leadership for several
years—who stated that the BLS had even conducted drug-related business
with fronts of the FARC and ELN guerrillas in 2004 and 2005.[263]
He claimed that as much as US$17 million was arriving in the region every week
for coca purchases, and that BLS commanders ordered three massacres in the port
town of Llorente in connection with coca.[264]

The BLS formally demobilized on July 30, 2005; 689
individuals participated in the demobilization ceremonies.[265]
But several sources reported to Human Rights Watch that the BLS engaged in
fraud during the demobilizations, inflating their ranks so as to allow portions
of the paramilitary networks to remain intact. Local authorities said that for
two or three months before the demobilization, paramilitaries were recruiting
young men to participate in the ceremonies. Authorities heard reports from
citizens who said they saw buses full of young men arriving in the area to have
their hair cut and put on uniforms like the paramilitaries. “Not all the
paramilitaries demobilized, and not all those who demobilized were
paramilitaries,” said one local official.[266]
The same official described how, a few weeks before the demobilizations, he ran
into a group of young men in a rural area who told him that they had received
an offer to enter the process so they could receive the government stipend
available to demobilized paramilitaries (the minimum wage for 18 months).[267]
An official at the local reference center for paramilitaries acknowledged that
“some of the [demobilized] could be civilians who snuck in.”[268]

The Rise of Successor Groups

Since the BLS demobilization, Nariño has been plagued
by violence from groups that operate in a manner similar to that of the AUC, by
recruiting, threatening, raping, and killing civilians, engaging in drug
trafficking, and competing with each other and the guerrillas over territory.
Initially, the most prominent of these was the New Generation Organization
(which has also gone by the acronym ACNG—Autodefensas Campesinas Nueva
Generación or Peasant Self Defense Forces of the New Generation, and
is now simply known as New Generation or NG).[269]
Subsequently, the Rastrojos group gained increasing strength, and Human Rights
Watch received numerous reports of the presence of a group known as the Black
Eagles.

The groups are concentrated in three principal zones: NG has
its largest presence in the mountains. The Rastrojos and Black Eagles operate
along the Pacific coastline (and are reportedly fighting for control of the
port city of Tumaco) and are increasingly appearing in the Andean region, along
the Tumaco-Pasto highway, and in the municipality of Barbacoas.

An official from the local reference center for demobilized
persons said he heard “lots of complaints that the [demobilized persons]
are being recruited by the same guys. Some say they’re in touch with
groups that remain active.... They’re trying to recruit persons with
experience.”[270]
The official said the reference center tries to keep track of them, but
“we don’t know if at night they’re doing things” with
the armed groups.[271]

The Ombudsman’s Office, in a risk report about
Nariño issued in 2007, described the case of a demobilized young man
from the BLS who had moved to the state of Córdoba. In April 2007 the
young man sought help from officials in Nariño, telling them that he had
accepted an offer from one of his former commanders to work on a logging
project in Nariño earlier that year.[272]
According to the report, he was instead being recruited again into an armed
group with counterinsurgency aims:

When he arrived to the rural area of Iscuandé [on
the northern coast of Nariño], he found nearly 200 persons there, 90 of
them demobilized persons who, he said “were also brought through
deception, as possible workers on the supposed logging project, without adequate
weapons, which would soon arrive so the whole group would be armed.” These
persons are being recruited for a second time to form a new paramilitary group,
to reenter the coastal area of the Pacific to combat insurgents and their
supposed social base; as well as to eventually joint the paramilitary group
that is currently carrying out armed actions in the mountains of the state.[273]

The young man managed to escape and authorities helped him
leave the state.[274]

All the successor groups are engaging in activities that
have an impact on the civilian population, including targeted killings of
civilians, threats, extortion, and forced displacement.

Several civil society groups, political leaders, and human
rights activists in Nariño, including the Tumaco Social Pastoral, the
Permanent Human Rights Committee, Avre, International Organization on
Migration, the Norwegian Refugee Council, and others, have received email
threats purporting to come from the New Generation paramilitaries. Threats were
distributed in March and July 2007, and then again in early 2008, in connection
with the march against paramilitary violence that was being organized for March
6, 2008. Another group calling itself the “Legion of the South Block of
the AUC” has distributed an open letter to the population of Nariño,
claiming that it is the true heir to the AUC, and announcing that it would
begin to carry out actions in Nariño against guerrillas and criminal
gangs.[275]

Nariño governor Antonio Navarro commented that “if
they are not paramilitaries, they are very similar to these groups.”[276]

Successor groups in the Andean Region of
Nariño

New Generation

After the BLS demobilization, reports began to emerge of
successor groups operating in several municipalities in the Andean mountains of
Nariño.[277]

In February 2007 the Organization of American States Mission
to Support the Peace Process (MAPP) reported that New Generation (NG) was
believed to have around 300 men operating in the region, and had solidified
control of communities in the municipalities of Los Andes, Policarpa,
Cumbitara, El Rosario, and Leiva.[278]
The report noted that in rural areas the group wore camouflaged uniforms and
bracelets with their insignia, and patrolled carrying long arms. The group was
controlling the civilian population through checkpoints on highways, and was
engaging in operations directed at civilians, including “extortion,
selective murders, rape, and threats.”[279]
The group had also engaged in combat against the FARC’s 29th
Front, which had resulted in massive displacement of civilians.[280]

A report by the Ombudsman’s Office shortly afterwards
noted that in addition to selective killings, disappearances, extortion,
recruitment of minors, and forced displacement, NG could be using antipersonnel
landmines.[281]
The report described the violent entry of NG in the municipality of Policarpa
in 2006, “announcing their intention to take over some sectors, without
regard for the costs that that would entail, where the point is to position
themselves strategically, blocking movements of the FARC, which operates in the
municipality.” In the same region, the report says, NG raped several
women, abused sex workers, and generated massive displacement of civilians.[282]

“They tortured the prostitutes for five days and raped
them,” an international observer said. “We saw two bodies in the
lower Patía
river at the time, and heard of many more.”[283]

“In August 2006 the paramilitaries killed my son in
Policarpa. They said he was a guerrilla... They tortured him, tied him up, ...
and shot him three times in the head in front of everybody,” said one woman.
“They said they would kill me, so I left.... They kill a lot of
people.”[284]

In the neighboring municipality of Cumbitara, a local
official said, the entry of NG resulted in many killings and forced displacement.
“There were 180 families in Sánchez in mid-2006.... By August 2007
there were about 20 families,” said the local official, who visited the
area. “It’s rumored that if you drained the Patía river, you
would find thousands of bodies.”[285]

One man who was displaced from Sánchez in 2006 said:
“The paramilitaries killed my boss and everyone who worked with him in
October 2006.... They were 18 men and the paramilitaries killed all of them
until they reached the boss and killed him.” The man said that at the
time there had been frequent combat between paramilitaries and guerrillas that
had resulted in many deaths. “On the Patía
river it made you sad to see how many bodies were going down the river. But now
they’ve found another way to hide the bodies. They open their stomachs and
put stones inside. It’s impossible to count how many people disappeared
there in the last two years.”[286]

A September 2007 report by investigators for the Office of
the Attorney General, which Human Rights Watch viewed, listed the NG’s
leader at the time as Guillermo Pérez Alzate (also known as Pablo
Sevillano), the head of the BLS who supposedly demobilized and was later
extradited to the United States. The report noted that NG arose immediately
after the demobilization of the BLS. It also states that the group at some
point split in two in an internal dispute. One of the sub-groups managed
municipalities in the northern part of the Nariño mountains, and was led
by a commander, Jhon Jairo García, known by his alias as “Nene.”
Nene had been a BLS member but did not demobilize. His group was reported as
having been organized into five counterguerrilla squads of 30 men each, who
wore camouflage and uniforms and carried AK-47s, as well as 11 other squads of
12 men each. The other group, led by “El Rolo” had a presence in
southern municipalities like Pasto and Ipiales. According to the same document,
NG had 50 minors in its ranks, ranging in age from 14 to 17 years. The group
financed itself by extorting the population and managing the coca business. The
report also states that the NG was responsible for homicides, disappearances,
forced displacement, and extortion.

Various sources told Human Rights Watch that in 2006 and
2007, sectors of the Colombian army, particularly the Boyacá Battalion
(the same battalion that allegedly helped the BLS enter the state in 2002)
appeared to be tolerating NG. But in 2008 the 19th Mobile Brigade of
the army entered the region and began to confront NG, and police officers
killed Nene. According to the Nariño Secretary of Government, Fabio
Trujillo, the regional government had called on public security forces to carry
out actions against NG, especially after a massacre in Leiva in late 2007.[287]

NG is reported to have been significantly weakened, though
in mid-2009

sources living in the region said that NG remained active in
the mountains, with a new commander known as “El Tigre” and with
about 200 men operating between the municipalities of Cumbitara and Policarpa.

Rastrojos and Black Eagles

As NG has become weaker, the Rastrojos group (which
reportedly is allied with factions of the ELN guerrillas) and the Black Eagles
have increased their presence in the mountains.

According to a recent report by the Early Warning System of
the Ombudsman’s Office, “in January 2009, the ‘Black Eagles’
and the ‘New Generation Self Defense Forces,’ the latter of which
has been decimated by the blows from the Public Security Forces, joined efforts
to contain the violent entry of the Rastrojos, which had established agreements
with the ELN guerrillas to combat the FARC, in the northern zone of the western
cordillera of Nariño.”[288]The report notes that in their effort to control
territory and populations, the groups were “occupying the homes of
residents and demanding ... services ... and the establishment of armed powers ...
resulting in a series of mechanisms of psychological and physical violence
against the civilian population, consisting of threats, extortion, extortive
kidnappings, killings, disappearances, and displacements.”[289]

Nariño Secretary of Government Fabio Trujillo agrees
that the Black Eagles seem to have joined forces with NG, and that the
Rastrojos are allied with the ELN.[290]
Similarly, an international observer said that “it’s clear that the
Black Eagles are fighting the Rastrojos.” He estimated that today,
between the two groups, there are easily 600 men around Policarpa. “All
the groups are exerting strong pressure on the region controlled by the
guerrillas—the Patía, El Charco. The army and navy are there.
There are attacks between the guerrillas and these paras.”[291]

The police in Nariño, however, spoke only of
Rastrojos and NG, claiming that the Black Eagles there were really just NG
using the name of Black Eagles.[292]

One young woman from Madrigal described the tight control of
her town by the Black Eagles, under the command of a man known as
“Araña”:

[T]he Black Eagles operate openly in town. The Rastrojos
are on the mountain. People say the guerrillas are on the other side of town.
The Black Eagles have always been around but on June 1, they started to come
into town. They used to come and take things from the town but now they live in
the homes in town. After that, they began to kill boys who were 15 or 16...
They charged taxes in the stores. I knew one of the boys they killed.
They’re proposing that the young men go with them. One of my friends is
going. At 6 p.m., everything closes and they go around in cars... They threaten
the girls and propose that they go as prostitutes for them. In Madrigal, three
girls went, and they killed one of them [in the neighboring town of Santa Cruz]...
The other two have disappeared.... The police are with Araña, they know
the situation.[293]

A man from Santa Cruz had a similar account:

In Madrigal, ... the Black Eagles interrogate us, with the
police 20 meters away... you can’t trust the army or police because
they’re practically with the guys. In Santa Cruz, there don’t
appear to be Black Eagles, because they’re in Madrigal and Bajo Cumbitara...

In Santa Cruz and Santa Rosa we have the Rastrojos. They
arrived in March or April. They arrived ... in camouflaged uniform.
They’re a lot, 100, 150, 300—they’ve grown a lot.
They’re in the town of Santa Rosa and then go into the countryside.
They’re in Santa Cruz a couple of days at a time and then leave. They
come in and tax the businessmen. It appears that they sometimes confront
guerrillas and other times the Black Eagles and New Generation. They identify
themselves as Rastrojos... They’ve done two meetings with the community
in Santa Cruz and say that they’re Rastrojos. They set schedules...

Before the Rastrojos, we had NG. The army attacked NG about
a year ago...The army stayed three weeks. They left, and a few days later the
Rastrojos entered Santa Rosa and Santa Cruz. The NG did too, but as Black
Eagles.... The Rastrojos do checkpoints in Santa Cruz.... The Black Eagles and
Rastrojos are fighting over territory.[294]

Successor Groups along the Junín-Barbacoas Road

Several sources describe the presence of an armed group,
believed to be Rastrojos, on the road from Junín (located alongside the
Tumaco-Pasto highway) to Barbacoas, where as of July 2008 they were said to
have had a checkpoint.[295]
According to several sources, the group not only stopped vehicles, but also
kidnapped civilians at the checkpoint. “The army is in Buenavista, and
the Rastrojos are five to ten kilometers away. Officially, the army can’t
confront them because they are the police’s responsibility. They’re
not the government’s military objective,” said one international
observer.[296]

Fabio Trujillo, the Nariño secretary of government,
recognized that an armed group had been stopping buses on the Junín-Barbacoas
highway and forcing people off—even committing selective killings in some
cases. He also recognized that the groups were carrying out a census of
populations in some towns, so they could keep track of who came in and who
left, and in that manner maintain control over territory.[297]

Yet Nariño Police Chief Col. William Montezuma, said
that “it’s a lie” that there are any checkpoints on the Junín-Barbacoas
road, or that groups there had killed or detained people. He also said he had
not heard of any census of the population: “It’s possible that the
illegal armed groups have committed violations... but I don’t know of any
formal reports.”[298]

Successor Groups on the Pacific Coast

There is a significant presence of Black Eagles, Rastrojos,
and other groups along the coast. As of mid-July 2009, the Nariño police
said there had been 154 killings in the municipality of Tumaco in 2009—an
increase over the 132 recorded in the first seven months of 2007.[299]
Residents of Tumaco, as well as international observers and national and
regional authorities, including Fabio Trujillo, said that Rastrojos and Black
Eagles are engaged in a major battle over control of Tumaco.[300]

A representative of persons displaced from the coast of
Nariño told us that the groups in the rural area of Tumaco are killing
not only each other but also civilians who refuse to sell them coca, and that
civilians recognize some of the members of the successor groups as former BLS
members and commanders.[301]

The groups have threatened and attacked human rights
defenders in the area. For example, the organization Caritas reported on the
killing, presumably by members of these groups, of Felipe Landazury, a member
of a local community council who also worked for the Caritas Diocese in Tumaco
helping displaced persons:

Armed men attacked Candelilla del Mar and captured Mr.
Landazury. After two hours, the dead body of the Caritas worker was found with
three gun wounds to the head. The armed men rounded up the local community and
threatened them, accusing them of passing on information to the Colombian army
and guerrillas about their activities in the area... The murder of Mr.
Landazury comes in the context of death threats to Caritas staff and people who
work with them, such as school teachers.[302]

A May 2007 report by the Ombudsman’s Office had described
the increasing presence of successor groups in the municipalities of El Charco,
La Tola, Iscuandé, and Olaya Herrera, on the Pacific coast.[303]
Generally, these had been areas with a FARC and ELN presence, but the report
stated that ACNG, Black Eagles, and Rastrojos were increasingly making an
appearance in these areas, particularly in the municipal capitals, where they
were seeking to influence local decisionmaking.[304]
In 2008, Human Rights Watch received reports that armed group members had been
seen wearing bracelets labeled ACN, for “Autodefensas Campesinas de
Nariño,” in Satinga.[305]
“They ordered that every boat going to Satinga had to stop in Pital for
verification and to see if they’d let it through,” a community
leader said.[306]

A woman from Satinga described ongoing harassment and
attacks by the successor groups:

We see them coming, they talk to people, they ask for the vacuna
(tax) and if there is cattle or a chicken, they take it. They kill people from
the community when they don’t pay... It’s very high ... in a very
poor area. People don’t have money to pay the vacuna. They have to
leave, become displaced in Cali, Buenaventura, Tumaco... They fight the
guerrillas: we hear the combats and [see] the dead. There are explosions.
It’s not the army or infantry... They’re like criminals but they
confront the guerrillas. They’re dressed the same as the army but have
insignia on their shoulders or backs and six months or a year ago they wore a
bracelet for the AUC. The AUC has turned itself in, but in the center of the
country—not in the coast. One part turns itself in but the rest
continues. Things change very little. The reality one lives is very different
from how the government paints it.[307]

A person who works in the municipalities of Satinga, Olaya
Herrera, and Mosquera said:

The violence continues but on a lesser scale, people
disappear and a few days later the bodies come down the river. They use many
young people to deliver the drugs and receive money and when they return they
kill them so they don’t have to pay. In some cases they’ve
threatened members of community councils, especially to start taking over the
territory. It’s a force of para-narcos or narcos defended by paras.... In
some communities it has generated displacement.[308]

Between June and July of 2008, more than two hundred
families in three communities in Satinga (San José La Turbia, Herradura,
and Gómez Jurado) became displaced after the killings of two young men
and the forced disappearance of a third at the hands of ACN. “They tied
people up, pushed them onto the floor, pulled people out and killed them in
front of others... Nobody knows why. They were poor people.”[309]One source said 118 families from San José La Turbia,
53 from la Herradura, and 40 from Gómez Jurado were displaced.
“They entered the urban area of Satinga... They emptied houses, turned
over each room. They put graffiti on the houses, which said
ACN—Autodefensas Campesinas de Nariño.”[310]

A community leader from the region described the events:

They called a meeting of the community [in the town],
accusing them of assisting the guerrillas. They took one guy who didn’t
appear again. The second night they took another one to the water and they
killed him. Later they killed another on the street in front of the community.
They were uniformed, with uniforms of the marine infantry but wearing ACN
bracelets.... People say they were about 48-50 in a boat.... On the field the
night of the killing there were 80 families.... After the first night they
collected all the weapons in the community and said that nobody should inform
the marine infantry because they were already informed.[311]

The community leader said that it’s generally believed
that the group is from outside the region. Members of the community, he said,
were very worried because there had been no investigation and nobody had been
held accountable. “We feel we have to leave our territory, with the
violence, fear... In Satinga every night there are two, three, four dead.
Nobody says anything. It’s a way to finish us off quietly. We’re
letting ourselves die off. For God’s sake, we can’t keep letting
ourselves be killed in this way.”[312]

Another source said the groups “fill people with fear...
They take the homes of displaced people. They exert control; they know about
the movements of boats and drug trafficking. Some are counterguerrilla and
others defend drug trafficking. The counterguerrillas point to the civilian
population, or attack young people who look like guerrillas.”[313]

According to the community leader:

In Mosquera and Satinga they talk about Black Eagles and
ACN but to us they’re paras—it’s the same barbarity,
brutality, violence, weapons, uniform of the marines. In town they’re
dressed as civilians but further up they’re uniformed or wearing black.
They have checkpoints leaving Olaya Herrera and above... They supposedly kill
collaborators of guerrillas to create terror. The thing in San José was
imposed terror, a killing in front of the community... Lots of bodies come down
the Sanguianga river and nobody picks them up. ACN sustains itself on the
narcos but it’s a way to control the territory.

The Killings in El Roble

On September 15, 2008, armed men arrived in the small town
of El Roble, on the outskirts of Tumaco, threw a grenade outside a house on the
edge of town, broke into it, and shot at the inhabitants. Two men and an
elderly woman were killed, and a baby was injured. Human Rights Watch was in
another part of Tumaco at the time and in the following days interviewed
survivors and local authorities, including the police, observed the bodies of
the victims at the Tumaco cemetery, and attended a community meeting at El Roble.

Community members and others said the killers were members
of an unknown group, possibly the Rastrojos, whom they described as
“paramilitaries.” According to several witnesses, two days before
the killings, on September 13, 2008, there had been a community meeting at
which members of the community had complained of the pressure they were under
from the FARC and the Rastrojos. That evening, four men, believed to be
Rastrojos, had an argument with a man from El Roble. The argument had ended
with the man from El Roble shooting at and wounding one of the Rastrojos. The
community, in fear that the men would come back to seek revenge, asked the
public security forces to come in to provide protection. Local civilian authorities
told Human Rights Watch that the army went to the town for a couple of hours,
but then left. The killings on September 15 were believed to have been
committed by the same men who had come into the town on September 13.

One neighbor of the victims described her experience:

My father was out and I was at home with my brother when we
heard a grenade shot almost in front of our house. Then we heard shots and a
woman calling for help. I thought it was my aunt. I had my child in my arms and
tried to escape... I ran into a wire that tore into me and I wanted to scream....
They shot a child and a woman who had nothing to do with it... My child who was
in my arms said let’s run, they’re going to kill us... I told him
not to cry.”[314]

According to another woman from the town:

The three people they killed were good neighbors... The
[killers] were paras. They had entered the town before and the town had a
meeting telling them they couldn’t enter or stay there. The paras took
weapons from people in town and went around as civilians. The town is strong
and when they heard shots they went to look for paras but by then the paras had
left... The army didn’t protect the village. When the police arrived ...
the paras had left.[315]

At the entrance to the hospital where the baby was being
treated after the shooting, we spoke with a friend of the family that was
attacked. She told us that “the people who died were the
great-grandmother, her son, and another neighbor. The [survivors] had to go to
the hospital in a canoe because they were afraid of going over land.” She
added: “I feel impotent. People can’t do anything in cases like
this. People who never bothered anyone, who were completely innocent, have to
pay.”[316]

When Human Rights Watch went to the city morgue to find the
bodies of the victims on September 17, 2008, it discovered that the police had
left the bodies unattended outside of the morgue in the Tumaco cemetery,
loosely wrapped in plastic bags. The bodies were surrounded by curious
residents of Tumaco who would occasionally lift the plastic to look at the
corpses. Officials from the Instituto de Medicina Legal, who would normally be
in charge of conducting autopsies in such cases, told Human Rights Watch they
did not even know the bodies were there, and in any case could not do anything
about them because the police had not given them the appropriate paperwork to
preserve the chain of custody (even though the chain of custody had already
been broken when the police abandoned the bodies).[317]
When Human Rights Watch asked the police why they had left the bodies there
unattended, they were unable to give an explanation.[318]

On September 18, 2008, the mayor of Tumaco, as well as
representatives from the navy, attended a community meeting in El Roble. Human
Rights Watch observed as several community leaders complained about the
killings and asked the authorities to provide them with better security:
“We’re not violent; we’re working people who want a society
without violence,” said one. The mayor of Tumaco told those in attendance
that their basic problem was that there were people in the community who were
growing coca. The community leaders said that many of them had ceased growing
coca, and that in any case, they needed protection because the armed
groups—both the guerrillas and the paramilitaries’ successors—were
pressing them to grow the crop. “We demand immediate assistance because
people are being displaced. We’re ready to abandon a crop that is not our
work and because we know it brings us problems,” said one leader. [319]

IV. Colombia’s Response

Despite clear obligations to act against the rise and threat
posed by the successor groups, the Colombian government’s response to
date has been weak and ineffective. The government has yet to take adequate
measures to confront and dismantle the groups, to protect the civilian
population from abuses, or to prevent toleration of the successor groups by
state agents, by investigating and vigorously prosecuting officials who are
credibly alleged to have tolerated or in any way collaborated with the
successor groups.

Obligations to Protect against the Successor Groups

The successor groups have been given various labels
including paramilitaries, criminal gangs, illegal armed groups, and drug
trafficking cartels. Various non-governmental organizations speak of a
“new generation of paramilitaries” or “new paramilitary
groups.”[320]
The MAPP/OAS speaks of “illegal armed units of a criminal nature,”
as well as “illegal armed groups,” and “armed factions
closely linked to illegal economic activities.”[321]
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights speaks of “illegal armed groups
that have emerged after the demobilization process began.”[322]

For its part, the Colombian government refuses to call the
successor groups paramilitaries—asserting that the paramilitaries have
demobilized—and instead labels them “emerging criminal gangs”
(“bandas criminales emergentes” or BACRIM for short). Some sources
have explained that the Colombian government’s refusal to label the
groups paramilitaries is designed to prevent them from making future claims
regarding entitlements and status as illegal armed groups in future
negotiations.[323]
But this explanation is inadequate, as the Colombian government has engaged in
negotiations with criminal organizations—such as Pablo Escobar’s
cartel—in the past, regardless of whether they were considered criminals
or armed groups.

Yet, as noted by the Office of the UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights, “whatever their denomination, [the groups] remain a
legitimate source of concern because they continue to inflict violence on the
civilian population.”[324]
And irrespective of their label the Colombian government bears specific
responsibilities to address the threat that they pose to the civilian
population. Those include obligations to protect civilians from harm, prevent
abuses, and ensure accountability for abuses when they occur.[325]
The level of state responsibility for the abuses of the successor groups will
increase depending on the extent to which state agents tolerate or actively
collaborate with these groups.

Whether or not the Colombian government wishes to label the
groups as paramilitaries, moreover, some groups could be considered armed
groups for the purposes of the laws of war (international humanitarian law,
IHL). In practice, the level of organization and territorial control enjoyed by
the successor groups varies, and some are more closely linked to the conflict
between the Colombian security forces and FARC and ELN guerillas than others.

Groups that can be said to be party to the conflict with the
guerillas, operate under a responsible command, and exercise such control over
territory “as to enable them to carry out sustained and concerted
military operations” are considered armed groups for the purposes of
international humanitarian law and should be bound by IHL.[326]
Several of the successor groups, such as New Generation in Nariño, as
well as groups operating in the departments of Meta, Vichada, and Guaviare, fit
this description, according to the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights in Colombia.[327]
Arguably, the other groups in Nariño, as well as the ones from
Urabá, which have at times been reported to confront some of the
guerrillas and which have a significant territorial presence, fit as well.

Other groups, enjoying less territorial control, less
organization, or not aligned to the conflict may simply be “criminal
organizations.” Yet in relation to those groups, the state still has a
legal duty to take reasonable steps to prevent the commission of human rights
violations, to carry out serious investigations of violations if committed, to
identify those responsible, to impose the appropriate punishment, and to ensure
victims adequate compensation.[328]

Combating the Groups

The Decision to Use the Police, not the Military,
to Combat the Successor Groups

Through a directive issued in 2009, the Ministry of Defense
has assigned the primary responsibility for combating the successor groups to
the Colombian National Police, strictly limiting the role the military may
play. This decision was based on the government’s position that the
successor groups are simply criminal gangs (bandas criminales or
BACRIM), and that it is the proper role of the police, not the military, to
confront them.

The Ministry of Defense’s 2009 directive states that
“the National Police will have primacy in the fight against the BACRIM.
When it considers it to be necessary, it may request support from the Military
Forces in accordance with the procedure established in [another section of the
directive.]”[329]
Specifically, when the police require assistance, the National Police director
may request a meeting with an Advisory Group headed by the commander of the
Armed Forces, which will determine the level of force that may be used in
responding to such requests.[330]
The directive also provides that the advisory group will determine which BACRIM
may be the targets of military operations in support of the National Police,
though it states that “in any case, in compliance with the Military
Forces’ constitutional duty to protect the population, when military
units carry out operations and have contact with a group that has not been
identified as an object of operations... the use of force shall be applied
[only] in legitimate defense....”[331]

The police unit charged with carrying out most operations
against the successor groups is the Division of Carabineers and Rural Security.[332]
Five zones have been prioritized as the main focus of the Carabineers’
operations. Each zone has several mobile squads of Carabineers (each of which
is composed of 3 officers, 10 sub-officers, and 107 patrolmen).[333]
Police sources said that there were 71 mobile squads in total, of which 20
belonged to the antinarcotics directorate and were used for eradication, not
fighting the successor groups. The other 51 were in the Carabineers unit, and
were assigned to the fight against the successor groups in rural areas.

There are some advantages to this approach, as the police
are more likely to conduct investigations and carry out arrests. The military
is more likely to use force, and has been known to commit extrajudicial
executions, as has been extensively documented by many organizations and the UN
special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions.[334]

But the current assignment of responsibilities has led to
some problematic consequences in practice.

First, the police do not have a large territorial presence,
particularly in rural areas, and so are simply not active in many regions where
the successor groups are operating. Typically, the police operate in urban
areas and only the Carabineers units are in rural areas. But in most of the
rural areas that Human Rights Watch visited and where successor groups were
active, residents had not seen any sign of the Carabineers units. This was true
of sectors of Meta, Urabá, and Nariño. Although the police claim
that they have sufficient resources to do their jobs, a former senior official
in the Ministry of Defense contended that the police do not have the capacity
or resources to effectively confront the successor groups in rural areas.[335]
For example, in Meta, the Vistahermosa police told Human Rights Watch that they
were assigned to work only within the urban areas, and were not responsible for
handling the successor groups in neighboring rural areas, such as in the small
town of Santo Domingo, where residents repeatedly complained of abuses by
Cuchillo’s men. But there was no presence of a Carabineers unit nearby to
confront this group.[336]

Second, although the directive provides that the military
may combat the successor groups to protect the civilian population in areas
where police are not present, at least some sectors of the army are failing to
do so.

Human Rights Watch observed this in Meta, where despite
numerous reports from residents and civilian authorities that Cuchillo’s
men were operating in Vistahermosa, representatives of both the police and the
army denied that Cuchillo had a strong presence in the area. Worse yet, each
entity said the other was responsible for dealing with the groups. Vistahermosa
police denied that there were any groups linked to paramilitaries in the
area—just guerrillas. “Cuchillo is not in Vistahermosa—maybe
in other parts of Meta,” said the commander of the Vistahermosa Police
Department.[337]
He said his police unit was not responsible for patrolling rural areas, as that
is the responsibility of the army.

Col. Correa, Commander of the 12th Mobile
Brigade, said there was some organized crime in the region, “but this is
a situation the police have to handle—not the army—because these
are criminal gangs. They’re not counterinsurgent groups.... If the groups
grow a lot, then it would be expected that the police request help from the
army, but the groups aren’t that big... There may be 15-20 men in arms,
and another 20 informers. Cuchillo is in Guaviare, not Meta.”[338]
The Colonel said that his Brigade had 1,600 troops in Vistahermosa.

Mixed Results and Obstacles to Progress in
Combating the Groups

The police have produced some important results in the form
of arrests of senior members of the successor groups. For example, the group
known as “Los Nevados,” which operated along the Atlantic coast in
areas formerly controlled by the Northern Block of the AUC, was significantly
weakened after the death of one of its leaders, Victor Manuel Mejía
Munera, and the arrest of his brother Miguel Ángel.[339]
Similarly, the police arrest of “Don Mario” in Urabá, and
the many arrests of leaders of the Envigado Office and other groups in
Medellín have been important blows to those groups.

Yet the police appear engaged in a losing battle against the
groups. In the words of one MAPP/OAS official, “a dead king is a replaced
king.” As leaders of the organizations are arrested, they are often
replaced by new leaders, as seems to have happened in Urabá after the
arrest of Don Mario. And when groups are dealt major blows, other groups step
in to fill their shoes. For example, according to one of the specialized
prosecutors charged with investigating the successor groups, after the death
and arrest of the Mejía Munera twins, the Nevados were absorbed by the
Paisas in Magdalena and Barranquilla.[340]
Ongoing recruitment means that the groups are able to easily replace lost
members.

As previously described, official police figures indicate
that the number of members in the groups has remained almost the same since
2006 (growing slightly from 4,000 to 4,037 between 2006 and mid-2009). But
their territorial presence has grown, going from 110 municipalities to 173.

This is especially disturbing because during the same
period, the security forces reported arresting 6,403 members of the successor
groups and killing 1,184. (Of this total, the police arrested 4,244 members of
the groups and killed 39, the army arrested 1,823 and killed 1,138, the navy
arrested 155 and killed 1, the DAS arrested 179 and killed 6, and the CTI arrested
2.)[341]

The fact that the membership of the successor groups remains
unchanged, despite more than 6,000 arrests of their supposed members, raises
questions about the effectiveness of the state’s efforts to combat them.

One explanation of the numbers may be that some of the
arrests are not well-grounded. One of the specialized prosecutors investigating
the successor groups said in many cases, in an effort to produce results, the
police had arrested people for various crimes that were unrelated to the successor
groups’ activity (for example, failure to pay child support) and counted
them as arrests of new group members.[342]
It is also likely that the arrests will be insufficient to stem the growth of
the groups if not accompanied by meaningful investigations that get to the
groups’ sources of financing and disrupt their ability to replace
arrested members and leaders.

Lack of Accountability

The Office of the Attorney General of Colombia has created a
specialized group to investigate successor groups. The group started working
with four prosecutors and seven or eight investigators in Bogotá in
November 2008. It also has a few local prosecutors assigned to work with it in
Medellín, Meta, and Antioquia. According to one of the specialized
prosecutors, due to resource limitations the group started out by focusing on
four main groups: the Nevados, ERPAC, the Urabeños, and the Paisas.[343]
The prosecutor said they had yet to focus much on Nariño. “The
groups mutate constantly. Six months ago the toughest were the Urabeños.
Now it’s the Rastrojos. The judicial process is slow. We’re just
now starting with Rastrojos.... The worst right now are Rastrojos,
Urabeños, Paisas, and ERPAC.”[344]

The main difficulties the unit faces, the prosecutor said,
are: first, a need for more prosecutors and investigators within the unit. One
prosecutor per major group is not enough, the prosecutor said.[345]
Sources in the police agreed, noting that the prosecutors in the unit are
“fabulous” and that they could work with the number they had, but
that it would be much better to have more.[346]
Second, the prosecutor said the members of the unit often were unable to do
their work effectively because officials in other state institutions, such as
the police and military, were failing to do their jobs adequately (for example,
with poor arrests). Third, the prosecutor said that links between the groups and
various state institutions, including law enforcement authorities and public
security forces, are a serious problem. The prosecutor explained that their unit
also investigates such links, but it is difficult to initiate criminal
proceedings against public servants, because “they have more to
lose” than other people, so prosecutors are more cautious. Third, the
prosecutor said the unit needed better access to wiretaps and other means of
intercepting communications if it was to effectively pursue officials.
“It’s our greatest investigative strength. Witnesses are difficult,
they take things back, they get threatened, they refuse protection. But the
technical proof is there. It’s difficult to get access to the system for
intercepting communications because we don’t have a set number of [phone
tapping] lines we can use.”[347]
In other words, while certain agencies or units of the Office of the Attorney
General have permanent access to phone tapping technology, through which the
calls of officials can be intercepted, their group does not. As a result, it
must often wait for the technology to become available before it can carry out
legal interceptions.

From October 2008 to July 2009, the prosecutor said, the
group had obtained approximately 300 arrest warrants, mostly for members of the
Urabeños and ERPAC. They had also arrested 70-80 persons, and were in
the process of plea bargaining with some of them. Other units of the Office of
the Attorney General have also carried out some arrests (for example, the case
against Don Mario is handled by the counternarcotics unit).

Prosecutions are also affected by general problems in the
Attorney General’s Office. For example, Human Rights Watch has repeatedly
received complaints from prosecutors about the difficulty of obtaining
protection for their witnesses, even in highly sensitive cases involving the
successor groups.

Toleration by State Agents

One explanation police gave for their failure to stem the
growth of the successor groups is that their “power to corrupt is strong.
It has touched the army ... [regional] prosecutors’ offices, not to
mention Medellín. That creates problems when you arrest them.”[348]

One of the specialized prosecutors investigating the successor
groups also pointed to alleged links between the groups and state agents as a
problem in Urabá: “There are links with the public security
forces, prosecutors, police, and DAS. They move like fish in the water. Whenever
there’s an operation, they’re alerted and they leave. That makes it
difficult to arrest them. They have a complex network of informants, going from
the woman in the store to the guy driving the motorcycle taxi. With one phone
call, that’s it. They’re very strong.”[349]
The same problem, the prosecutor said, presented itself in Meta, where
“there are links with the public security forces, which block the arrests
of Cuchillo and [notorious drug lord] El Loco Barrera.... The problem of links
is difficult because if it’s not one institution it’s another. In
all the institutions there are good and very bad people. And at any level, the
information can be very useful for them.”[350]

In each of the regions that Human Rights Watch visited, it
received reports of toleration of successor groups by members of the public
security forces or other state agents. But the Colombian government has yet to
take effective action to investigate such allegations.

Representatives of the police, the MAPP/OAS, and the Office
of the Attorney General also said that they had observed serious problems
involving, at a minimum, toleration of successor groups and local corruption of
state officials. What remains unclear is how widespread the problem is, and
whether, in the public security forces, it extends up the chain of command.

For example, an international observer based in
Cúcuta explained that, especially in Puerto Santander, a border town,
demobilized men had been recruited by the police so they would join successor
groups.[351]
Other sources in Cúcuta said: “The big difficulty is the degree of
corruption. At the Attorney General’s Office and at the police you
don’t know who you’re talking with.... The most dangerous thing you
can do is have the police next to you.”[352]
Representatives of a non-governmental organization in Tibú, a few hours
from Cúcuta, said that “the police serve only two purposes:
requesting a commission from the gasoline distributors, and charging vacuna
[tax] from the people selling drugs.”[353]

In Urabá, according to many residents, members of the
army and local police regularly appear to tolerate the activities of the
Urabeños, and the police sometimes seem to collaborate with the group. A
2008 report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, based on a visit
to the region, describes having received formal reports from the Colombian
Office of the Inspector General recognizing “the existence of a permanent
risk for the inhabitants of the valleys of the rivers Jiguamiandó and
Curvaradó, derived among others, from the actions of illegal armed
groups in collusion with members of the public security forces, which were
reportedly forcibly displacing the population or impeding its access to the
community territory.”[354]

“The public security forces don’t do anything. If
you tell someone in the military, they let the group know. You can’t
report anything here. They control everything that moves, and the public
security forces are right there,” said one community member.[355]

A national official who until recently worked in the
Urabá region said that “I haven’t noticed collaboration by
the army with the [groups], but I have seen total toleration.” According
to this official, the army was supposed to be responsible for combating the
successor groups in rural areas, while the police were supposed to be in charge
of urban areas. But the army “doesn’t confront them.” The
same official reported that the police in one town, Belén de Bajirá,
appeared to collaborate with the Black Eagles. “It’s all very
evident... The police control the entry and exit [of town] and ... they share
intelligence. The paras control the area. Belén de Bajirá is very
important because that’s where the highway goes through. That’s
also where the economic and political power of the region are concentrated...,
the management of the palm cultivation, ranching, lumber.”[356]
Another man agreed, adding that “in Pavarandó ... the Black Eagles
hold meetings with the community in front of the police. In Belén de
Bajirá, it’s the same, the police, army and Black Eagles.”[357]
He said the Black Eagles had taken 18 young men, including his grandson, from
Belén de Bajirá the week before he met with us. His grandson
escaped.

On October 15, 2008, the Autodefensas Gaitanistas de
Colombia (which locals say are the same as the Black Eagles) called for a
regional armed strike “against the FARC” by distributing flyers in
Turbo, Apartadó, and Carepa.[358]
According to various sources, much of the Urabá region stopped working.
“Everything stopped. We couldn’t do anything. If any businessperson
opened and sold something they threatened you,” said one resident.[359]
“The AGC announced the strike through pamphlets and by spreading the word
on the streets,” said a former national authority who worked in the
region at the time. The same authority said, “They put graffiti on the
walls. It was their public introduction. The local authorities didn’t
acknowledge that the strike had happened. The police in Apartadó helped
them carry it out.”[360]

Several sources described a context of substantial
corruption of local authorities in Urabá, who allegedly had been bought
off by local businessmen and the successor groups. “They have the law and
they stick it under their arms, because their law is money,” said one
resident.[361]

Similarly, in Meta, several sources said that the army looked
the other way when it came to Cuchillo’s groups. One official said he had
received “constant complaints that the army threatens people, talking
about how ‘the Cuchillos’ are coming behind. In some cases, the
army leaves and the Cuchillos come in... The Cuchillos and the army are clearly
present in Puerto Gaitán. Some of the Cuchillos are dressed as civilians
and others are in uniform.”[362]

One witness said that members of the 12th Brigade
had told her, “don’t be afraid of us, be afraid of the ones who come
behind us,” alluding to Cuchillo’s group.[363]
We received similar reports from a resident of Puerto Rico, Meta, who had
previously been in Bajo Guaiamal. He said the army had accused him of being a
guerrilla and told him that if he didn’t demobilize the paramilitaries
would come: “They say ‘don’t be afraid of us, but be afraid
of the men who come behind us.’ In that area, there are men patrolling,
wearing the AUC insignia and identifying themselves as AUC members.”[364]

In late 2008, President Uribe publicly questioned whether
the Fourth Division of the army was protecting “El Loco Barrera”
and Cuchillo. According to Semana magazine, recordings of the Loco
Barrera’s phone conversations showed that he was aware of various army
movements, and suggested that he had contacts within the army.[365]

While the public security forces have been known to confront
some of the successor groups in Nariño—particularly New Generation
since 2008—numerous sources described instances in which soldiers and members
of the police appeared to tolerate, and in at least one case—that of sectors
of the Boyacá Battalion of the Army in 2006 described
below—apparently actively collaborated with the successor groups in
Nariño.

According to various sources, in May 2006, approximately
10,000 persons in Nariño participated in a massive
demonstration—in some cases under coercion by the FARC. The
Ombudsman’s Office reported that as residents of Policarpa and Cumbitara
began traveling towards the municipality of Remolinos to participate in the May
15 demonstration on the Pan-American Highway, they were harassed by NG.[366]
Once the demonstrators arrived at the highway, public security forces
reportedly responded with force; 130 civilians were wounded and 17
“disappeared.”[367]
Due to the response by the public security forces, the Ombudsman’s Office
reported that 4,000 people were forced to go to Pasto, where they remained for
several days, receiving assistance from various authorities and international
organizations.[368]
During the demonstration, witnesses claimed to have observed persons they
identified as paramilitaries carrying weapons and moving around in army trucks.[369]

In addition, several days after the demonstration was over,
several international organizations and local authorities formed a
“humanitarian mission” to accompany the marchers to return to their
homes.[370]
Human Rights Watch received consistent reports that when the mission arrived at
the town of Ejido and asked to speak to the military commander in the area,
they were instead introduced to “Armando Paz,” who identified
himself as the commander of New Generation and told them not to worry because
he would guarantee their security so the marchers could go home.[371]
The men under Armando Paz’s command then proceeded to lift two
checkpoints that they had set up along the road. Nearby, the mission found
bodies of NG members and civilians; apparently New Generation had been engaging
in combat with the FARC in the area.[372]

All the witnesses to the encounter in Ejido said that the
group was clearly working with members of the army. “They were traveling
on army trucks,” said one. “And the army was also present at the
entrance to Ejido,” so there was no possibility that they did not know
about NG’s presence there, the witness said.[373]

More broadly, victims and others repeatedly described seeing
members of the army and navy operating in close proximity to the successor
groups—sometimes only ten minutes away on a single road—without
confronting them or acknowledging their existence.[374]

In particular, observers said that in 2006 they had observed
links between NG and members of the Boyacá Battalion of the Army. Since
then, Human Rights Watch received reports that with the entry of a new mobile
brigade of the army in the cordillera, the army had confronted NG. At the same time,
the police carried out arrests of NG leaders. But, as New Generation has fallen
apart, the Rastrojos and Black Eagles appear to be gaining strength. And Human
Rights Watch received reports that, in several cases, sectors of the public
security forces appeared to be tolerating the activities of these groups,
especially the Black Eagles.

An international observer expressed concern over possible
toleration of the Black Eagles by members of the army and police in the
mountains of Nariño. “The police are 300 meters away and do
nothing... The guys are with weapons right next to the police station in
Policarpa and Madrigal. There’s a strong military push by the Black Eagles
there.”[375]
Similarly, the Early Warning System of the Ombudsman’s Office reported in
a follow-up note to one of its risk reports that on March 17, 2009, the army’s
Boyacá Battalion had confronted the Rastrojos in Santacruz, in the
mountains. But after chasing out the Rastrojos, portions of the army had then
apparently allowed the Black Eagles to come in and remain there:

According to multiple sources, the entry of the army
coincided with the arrival of the new illegal armed group ... the “Black
Eagles.” On Wednesday, March 18, the Ombudsman’s Office realized
that after the Rastrojos had been removed from the town, the ... Black Eagles
had occupied the homes, retaining and taking away one of the inhabitants.... Currently,
the community is in a dilemma because if it leaves and becomes displaced, it
will become more vulnerable, and hiding in the mountains means they would
become the target of attacks by the armed actors. Their defenseless situation
is made worse by the lack of effective protection and prevention by the public
security forces. In a security council [a meeting of relevant authorities and
community members to discuss security in the region] carried out on March 19,
2009, in the municipal capital of Policarpa, the municipal authorities and
public security force members confirmed the presence of the Rastrojos in the
area... At the same time, the public security forces denied the existence and
presence of the Black Eagles in the municipality, even while the local
authorities warned about the existence of graffiti of “Black
Eagles” on the houses in Santacruz.[376]

As previously noted, when Human Rights Watch asked the
Nariño police chief about the Black Eagles, he denied their existence. However,
later the police have reported arrests of a number of members of this group.

On the coast of Nariño, multiple sources also
described situations of possible toleration of the successor groups by members
of the public security forces. “The problem is with all the authorities.
In Satinga the police are very young and almost don’t move due to fear.
In the community there are people dying close to the police and they say they
[know nothing]. I think police are in connivance and receive money” from
the groups, said one source from Satinga.[377]
In Salahonda, another man told us, there were “some 30 paramilitaries
living there...Those men, in that town know all of us because it is very small.
The public security forces know about it and know that the men are there and
who they are and they never do anything.”[378]

Unfortunately, the Colombian government has yet to take
effective steps to prevent and punish such alleged toleration or possible links
between members of the security forces or other state agents and the successor
groups.

In some cases, the police seemed to respond to allegations
of toleration by simply transferring members to different locations—as
happened in the previously described displacement of residents in the Pablo
Escobar neighborhood in Medellín, where community members said that even
though the local police had been replaced on multiple occasions, the same
patterns of behavior kept reestablishing themselves.

There have been few prosecutions of state agents for alleged
toleration of or links to the successor groups. The exceptions usually have
involved widely publicized allegations of collusion by high ranking civilian
authorities, not public security forces.

For example, the governor of the state of Guaviare, Oscar de
Jesús López Cadavid, has come under investigation for allegedly
working with Cuchillo. López, who served three terms as a representative
in the national congress, and was elected governor in 2007, is accused of
having maintained relationships with paramilitaries beginning over six years
ago. The Attorney General’s Office is reported to have uncovered evidence
that Cuchillo threatened other candidates to the governorship and ordered
voters to vote for López.[379]

A recent article in Semana reports that demobilized
paramilitary boss Éver Veloza García, alias “H.H.,”
said that Óscar López had worked with paramilitary leader Vicente
Castaño to obtain vast tracts of land in Casanare to plant African palm.
“While the paramilitaries intimidated or displaced peasants, supposedly
López and his front men were buying them [off], reported the former
paramilitary.” Semana also reports that López had been a
partner of Cuchillo and one of his deputies in a mining company López
created in 2005. According to Semana, López claimed that he
accepted Cuchillo as a partner because he was demobilizing, and in any case
Cuchillo later gave his interest in the company to someone else.[380]

Similarly, Semana reports that investigations by the
Supreme Court and the Office of the Attorney General suggest that
Cuchillo’s group had a role in supporting the election of former Army
Colonel Blas Arvelio Ortíz Rebolledo as governor of Vichada. “They
presumably helped him with resources, pressed persons to vote for him, and in
some cases ... manipulated the elections and the results.” According to Semana,
Ortíz, who had served as commander of the army brigade in Vichada, is
facing numerous criminal complaints for supposedly benefiting from electoral
fraud, winning by only nine votes.[381]

The former chief prosecutor in Medellín, Guillermo
León Valencia Cossio, who is the brother of Colombia’s minister of
the interior and justice, is now on trial before the Supreme Court for allegedly
working with Don Mario’s group in Medellín.[382]
Prosecutors have said they have 1,600 recordings of conversations involving
Valencia and the accused drug trafficker John Freddy Manco (known by his alias
“El Indio”), as well as businessman Juan Felipe Sierra, which
allegedly implicate Valencia. In one of the intercepted calls, Valencia
allegedly agreed to remove Manco from his spot on a police flow chart as the
second most senior member of Don Mario’s group.[383]
General Marco Antonio Pedreros, the commander of the police in Medellín,
resigned from the police force as a result of the same scandal, after
recordings revealed a conversation between him and Sierra, though Pedreros has
denied involvement in criminal activity.[384]

For years, the Colombian government denied the existence of
links between the AUC and important sectors of the military. In fact,
investigations of high-ranking members of the military for those links continue
to progress very slowly. And it is only thanks to the investigations of the
Colombian Supreme Court that paramilitaries’ close links with many
members of Congress are coming to light. In light of this history, allegations
of toleration of or collaboration with successor groups by state agents are an
issue that require continued monitoring and close attention, as well as strong
preventive action by the government.

In particular, the government must ensure that allegations
of toleration of successor groups by security forces result in meaningful
criminal investigations, vigorous prosecution, and punishment of those found
responsible—not just transfers to other regions. The Ministry of Defense
should ensure that members of the public security forces who are credibly
alleged to have collaborated with or tolerated the activities of successor groups
are suspended while investigations proceed.

Failure to Adequately Protect Civilians

Through the Ministry of Interior and Justice, the Colombian
government has for years managed a protection program for human rights
defenders, trade unionists, and journalists who are deemed to be at risk. That
program offers various levels of protection—from cell phones to
bullet-resistant vests to police escorts—to its beneficiaries. The
program has provided much-needed protection to persons who were at serious
risk. But the program focuses on certain vulnerable groups and does not provide
protection to former AUC victims seeking to assert their rights. Nor does it
provide protection or assistance to the many ordinary Colombians who are now
being threatened or attacked by the successor groups.

Questions about Protection for AUC Victims

More than 200,000 persons have registered as victims for
purposes of the Justice and Peace Law.[385]
Legally, these victims have the right to assistance, representation, and
protection by the state.[386]
In August 2007, in response to a petition by a group of victims, a judge
ordered the government to “design, implement, and execute a Program for
the Protection of Victims and Witnesses in the Justice and Peace Law”
within thirty days.[387]
In response, President Uribe issued a decree ordering the establishment of a
protection program.[388]
However, the decree has been controversial, in part because the initial
protection is to be provided through assistance by the local police, which many
victims do not trust because of what is often a long history of perceived collaboration
between the paramilitaries and local police.[389]
“We had one case of a person who had been threatened in Barranquilla ...
but that person was being pursued by the police in the region,” complained
one representative of a victims’ group. “The decree says that the
police must protect them ... but with the context of complicity, it’s
very difficult.”[390]

Moreover, the government appealed the ruling requiring the
establishment of the program. Fortunately, after an initial reversal by the
Council of State, the Constitutional Court upheld the initial court ruling
requiring a victims’ protection program, and ordered the government to
establish one that took into account the victims’ gender.[391]

Carlos Franco, who works in the Presidential Human Rights
Program of Colombia, stated that the government is now implementing a
protection program through the National Police, which has developed “risk
maps” to determine what level of protection to provide to victims in the
Justice and Peace process in different regions around the country.[392]

According to the Women’s Initiative for Peace
(Iniciativa de Mujeres por la Paz, or IMP), the leading organization that
brought the case demanding the establishment of a victims’ protection
program, the Police have in fact developed risk maps to determine where to
focus their attention. In municipalities with higher levels of risk, the police
are supposed to increase their presence and activity. The maps, as described in
IMP’s report, state that of Colombia’s 1,099 municipalities, the
vast majority (889) present only “low” levels of risk, while in
another 124 the risk is “non-existent”. In only 23 did they find
“extraordinary” risk, and in only 40 did they find
“high” risk. IMP also states that the government has provided
direct protection to some victims. From October 2007 to September 2008, the
government is reported to have reviewed the cases of 412 persons seeking
protection. It provided assistance in 106 of those cases. [393]

It is positive that the government has taken some steps to
provide protection to AUC victims in the Justice and Peace process, and to
increase security in certain municipalities. Yet the number of municipalities
considered to present a “high” level of risk, and of persons who
received protection—at least as of mid-2008—appears relatively low,
and raises some concern as to whether the program is effectively covering all
victims participating in the Justice and Peace Law process who may be at risk. Also,
not all AUC victims are participating in the Justice and Peace Law process, and
they are not covered by the decree.

In response to a request from Human Rights Watch for more
detailed information about the protection program, the Colombian government
stated that, while it is implementing a protection program pursuant to the
original decree, it has also drafted a new decree that is in the process of
being approved. The government states that the new program will be centrally
coordinated by the Ministry of Interior, and will have greater regional
coverage.[394]

Failure to Adequately Register Displacement by the
Successor Groups

Human Rights Watch received information from various sources
indicating that in some cases local offices of Social Action were refusing to
register as displaced persons people who said they were forced to leave their
homes by paramilitaries. As reported by the Monitoring Commission on Forced
Displacement in its report to the Constitutional Court:

[T]he reports of displacement caused by paramilitaries in
the official information system have been dropping probably and among other
factors, due to the difficulties that have arisen in the processes of
registration ... due to the paramilitary demobilization process... As has been
reported by many organizations ... some Territorial Units (TUs) of Social
Action began to systematically refuse to register persons and homes who
reported that paramilitaries were responsible for their displacement. According
to the reports about the situation, the TUs were operating on the assumption
that the paramilitaries, having demobilized, could not be accused of having
caused the displacement.[395]

Similarly, Human Rights Watch received reports indicating
that in some regions, Social Action was refusing to register persons as
displaced when they claimed that they had been displaced by successor groups,
on the grounds that those groups were “criminal.” For example, in
Medellín alone, the Medellín Personería received 206
statements from victims of forced displacement within the city between January
and June of 2009. Of those, 172 statements had been filed within the National
Registry of Displaced Persons managed by Social Action. Yet, according to the
Personería, 50 percent of those statements (involving 348 persons) had
been rejected by Social Action. One of the main reasons for rejection,
according to the Personería, was that the victims stated they had been
displaced by actors that Social Action considered to be “common
crime” or “organized crime.”[396]
A representative of Lutheran World Relief told Human Rights Watch that their
staff in the state of Córdoba had often observed the same problem, with
state officials refusing to register persons as displaced if they reported
having been forced out by successor groups.[397]

The state’s failure to register these persons could
result in underestimation of the problem of displacement and difficulties in
diagnosing its causes, rendering it more difficult to address the problem. And
persons who are not registered as displaced do not receive the protection and
assistance from the state to which they would otherwise be entitled.

In a meeting with human rights groups, the head of Social
Action said that “there is no order not to register victims of the
emerging gangs.... It’s not a substantive policy.”[398]
Yet in light of the various reports that this was happening locally, he
promised to look into the problem.

Inadequate Responses to and Resources for Early
Warning System

One agency that has performed an important role in
identifying risks to civilians posed by the successor groups is the Early
Warning System (EWS) in the Ombudsman’s Office. Often, the regional
analysts for the EWS are the first and almost the only civilian state officials
traveling to remote regions when there is a humanitarian crisis, threats
against the civilian population, or other human rights problems. The EWS
regularly produces “risk reports” about threats to civilian
populations in various regions. Those reports go to an inter-institutional
government committee, composed of the vice-president of Colombia, the
president’s high advisor for social action, the minister of interior and
justice, the minister of defense, and the director of the National Intelligence
Service (the DAS). That committee evaluates the risk and determines whether to
issue an “early warning” on the basis of the risk report, issues
recommendations to civilian authorities and public security forces to take
preventive measures, and monitors the implementation of the measures and the
evolution of the risk.[399]
The committee has been criticized for often failing to issue early warnings
based on serious risk reports, sometimes with fatal consequences.[400]
In fact, between 2008 and 2009, the committee only issued Early Warnings based
on half of the risk reports produced by the EWS (that is, there were 110
reports of risk, but the committee only issued 55 early warnings).[401]

The EWS has often produced risk reports about the threats
posed by the successor groups. Between 2008 and 2009, the EWS listed the
successor groups as the source of a risk an equal number of times as it listed
the FARC guerrillas (88 times each) as sources of risk.[402]
However, the reports have often been controversial and generated negative
reactions from other parts of the government. For example, in Meta, various
sources told Human Rights Watch that the inter-institutional committee had
issued an early warning but then lifted it after local authorities complained.

The Office of the Inspector General of the US Agency for
International Development (USAID) has noted that the independence of the EWS
“has arguably been compromised by giving final decision-making authority
to” the Inter-Institutional Early Warning Committee (the CIAT), and that
there is “some evidence that CIAT’s involvement has reduced the
number of warnings issued... According to several sources, human rights abuses
have at times occurred even though a risk report has been forwarded by the EWS
to CIAT.”[403]
Accordingly, USAID has recommended that the Colombian government reform the
system to ensure publicity of risk reports; provide for participation in and
oversight of the CIAT by representatives of the Ombudsman’s Office and
the Inspector General’s Office; implement procedures to ensure timely and
effective communication between the EWS and the CIAT; and ensure that the EWS
has internal timelines for preparing and forwarding risk reports.[404]

The EWS has also suffered due to insufficient or delayed
funding, which has led to loss of personnel and difficulties for its analysts
in carrying out their work. The EWS was created with significant US support,
but over time USAID has drawn down funds, seeking the
“colombianization” of the project. According to EWS
representatives, as of December 21, 2009, USAID ceased to provide funding for
the operating budget of the EWS (though it continued providing funding for some
expenses such as cell phone use), transferring responsibility for the operating
budget entirely to the Colombian government. Yet, the Colombian government has
been slow to step in to cover the shortfall, and much of the staff of the EWS
are now working with contracts that go only through July 2010. As a result, EWS
officials expressed concern about their job security, stating they feared their
positions might not be funded after July.[405]

Human Rights Watch thanks the many brave Colombians
throughout the country who agreed to speak with us, sometimes traveling great
distances to see us, without whom this report would not have been possible. Many
of them asked not to be named for security reasons.

[1]
Human Rights Watch interview with “Lucía” (name changed at
the request of the source), Bogotá, March 14, 2009.

[2]
National Labor School, “Chart on Violations against Life, Liberty and
Wellbeing against Trade Unionists: Killings, Threats and Disappearances by
Perpetrator, 2002-2009,” undated, copy sent by email from National Labor
School to Human Rights Watch on August 26, 2009.

[3]
Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation, Sole
Registry of the Displaced Population, General Charts of the Displaced
population, cutoff date of November 30, 2009,
http://www.accionsocial.gov.co/Estadisticas/publicacion%20noviembre%20de%202009.htm
(accessed December 29, 2009).

[10]
Human Rights Watch’s position on the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement is
more fully described in: Human Rights Watch, Comments to the Office of the US
Trade Representative Concerning the US-Colombia Free Trade Agreement, September
15, 2009, http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/09/15/human-rights-watch-comments-office-us-trade-representative-concerning-us-colombia-fr
(accessed January 19, 2010).

[11]
Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, Presidency of the Republic of
Colombia, “Proceso de Paz con las Autodefensas: Informe Ejecutivo”
(Peace Process with the Self-Defense Forces: Executive Report), December 2006, www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/libro/Libro.pdf
(accessed October 13, 2009), p. 99.

The number refers to paramilitaries who participated
in “collective” demobilizations of their blocks. Another 3,682 are
reported to have demobilized “individually”—that is, on their
own and not as part of a larger block. Colombian National Police, Office to
Coordinate with the High Advisor for Reintegration, Collectively and Individually
Demobilized Persons: “Monitoring Report,” July 2009,
http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/web/noticias/2009/julio/documentos/37%20CONTROL%20DESMOVILIZADOS%20JULIO.pdf
(accessed October 14, 2009), p. 3.

[12]
“Justice and Peace Law,” Colombian Law 975 of July 25, 2005. Human
Rights Watch criticized the law extensively when it first came out. Later, the
Colombian Constitutional Court approved the law, but conditioned its approval
on various modifications, which corrected some of the most serious problems
Human Rights Watch and others had identified. As modified by the Court, the
Justice and Peace Law requires full and truthful confessions, provides that reduced
sentences may be revoked if paramilitaries lie or fail to comply with various
requirements, and sets no time limits on investigations. The Court also struck
down provisions that would have allowed paramilitaries to serve reduced
sentences outside of prison and to count the time they spent negotiating as
time served. Colombian Constitutional Court, Sentence C-370/2006, May 18, 2006.

[13]
Néstor Alonzo López, “La Última Noche del
Cacique” (The Last Night of the Cacique), El Tiempo, November 26,
2003, http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-1038048 (accessed October
29, 2009). Human Rights Watch interview with officials from the Permanent Human
Rights Unit of the Personería de Medellín, Medellín, June
2, 2009. Human Rights Watch interview with a former member of the Catatumbo
Block of the AUC, Cúcuta (Norte de Santander), September 2, 2008. Human
Rights Watch interview with a former member of the Minero Block of the AUC,
Sincelejo (Sucre), February 25, 2008.

[14]
Human Rights Watch interview with officials from the Permanent Human Rights
Unit of the Personería de Medellín, June 2, 2009.

[15]
Human Rights Watch interview with a former member of the Catatumbo Block of the
AUC, Cúcuta (Norte de Santander), September 2, 2008.

[16]
Human Rights Watch interview with a former member of the Mineros Block of the
AUC, Sincelejo (Sucre), February 25, 2008.

[17]
The High Commissioner for Peace of Colombia reported two demobilizations of
members of the Northern Block: one of 2,215 individuals on March 8, 2006, and
another of 2,544 persons on March 10, 2006. Office of the High Commissioner for
Peace, Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, “Proceso de Paz con las
Autodefensas: Informe Ejecutivo” (Peace Process with the Self-Defense
Forces: Executive Report), pp. 84, 86.

[20]
Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, “Report on the Implementation
of the Justice and Peace Law: Initial Stages in the Demobilization of the AUC
and First Judicial Proceedings,” OEA/Ser/L/V/II.Doc.3, October 2, 2007, para.
13.

[24]
Law 418 of 1997, as modified by Law 782 of 2002, establishes that “the
National Government may grant, in each particular case, the benefit of a pardon
to nationals who may have been convicted for acts that constitute political
crimes when ... the illegal armed group with which there is a peace process ...
has demonstrated its will to reincorporate itself to civilian life.” Law
418 of 1997, art. 50. The same article establishes that “the provisions
in this title shall not be applied to those who carry out conduct constituting
atrocious acts of ferocity or barbarity, terrorism, kidnappings, genocide,
homicide outside of combat or putting the victim in a defenseless state.”
In addition, Colombian Decree 128 of 2003, which regulates Law 782 for purposes
of the collective demobilization of paramilitaries, establishes that “the
demobilized who formed part of illegal armed groups who the Operative Committee
for the Abandonment of Arms certifies as having demobilized ... shall have the
right to a pardon, conditional suspension of the execution of the sentence,
cessation of criminal proceedings, the closing of the investigation, or a
resolution abandoning the investigation, according to the stage of the
proceeding.” Colombian Decree 128 of 2003, art. 13 (English translation
by Human Rights Watch).

[25]
Human Rights Watch, Colombia - Smoke and Mirrors. The demobilizing
individuals were photographed, fingerprinted, and issued government
identification. They were also asked to answer a set number of questions from
prosecutors, but as Human Rights Watch explained at the time, the questions
were very superficial: To which block did you belong? When did you join? Who
was your commander? Where did you operate? What was your role in the
organization? And, why did you demobilize? After the release of Smoke and
Mirrors, following our recommendations, the Colombian Attorney
General’s Office altered the list of questions its prosecutors asked
demobilizing individuals, adding a question about their aliases, as well as a
few other essential questions. However, it never turned these interviews into
effective interrogations, and the office did not re-interview those who had already
gone through the process.

[41]The
Colombian government reports that there are 3,292,666 internally displaced
persons in Colombia as of November 30, 2009. Presidential Agency for Social
Action and International Cooperation, Sole Registry of the Displaced
Population, General Charts of the Displaced population, cutoff date of November
30, 2009, http://www.accionsocial.gov.co/Estadisticas/publicacion%20noviembre%20de%202009.htm
(accessed December 29, 2009).

[42]Comisión de Seguimiento a la Política
Pública Sobre el Desplazamiento Forzado, “Verificando el
cumplimiento de los derechos: Primer informe de verificación presentado
a la Corte Constitucional,” (“Verifying the
fulfillment of rights: First verification report presented to the
Constitutional Court”), pp. 52-53, January 31, 2008. Another 29
percent reported being displaced by the FARC, and 3 percent by the ELN; 22.5
percent either gave no answer or refused to answer the question. The same
report notes that there is a discrepancy between this survey and the official
information system about displaced persons, which attributes only 11.3 percent
of cases of displacement to paramilitaries.

[44]Comisión de Seguimiento a la Política
Pública Sobre el Desplazamiento Forzado, “Verificando el
cumplimiento de los derechos: Primer informe de verificación presentado
a la Corte Constitucional,” p.81.The Office of Colombia’s
Inspector General agrees with Social Action’s numbers. Office of the
Inspector General of Colombia, “Project on Preventive Control and
Monitoring of Public Policies with Regard to Reintegration and
Demobilization,” vol. 1, p. 154. Assuming that paramilitaries took 37
percent of that land, they would have taken 2.5 million hectares.

[45]
Office of the Inspector General of Colombia, “Project on Preventive
Control and Monitoring of Public Policies with Regard to Reintegration and
Demobilization,” p. 157.

[46]Human Rights Watch
interview with Marlene Mesa, deputy director for Assistance to Victims of
Violence—National Reparations Fund, February 22, 2008. Initially, the
Office of the High Commissioner for Peace reported that during demobilization
ceremonies the groups turned over 59 urban immobile properties, 149
automobiles, and 3 airplanes, and that the groups provided information about
334 rural properties (adding up to 25,601 hectares). Office of the High
Commissioner for Peace, Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, “Proceso
de Paz con las Autodefensas: Informe Ejecutivo” (Peace Process with the
Self-Defense Forces: Executive Report), p. 101. An updated list of items that
have been turned over is available on the website of Social Action. Social
Action, Victims Reparation Fund,
http://www.accionsocial.gov.co/contenido/contenido.aspx?catID=455&conID=1667
(accessed October 14, 2009).

[49]
By decree, the Colombian government ordered in 2006 that the CNRR design a
Program on Restitution of Assets, with the assistance of the Commissions on
Restitutions of Assets (although these commissions had not yet been created at
the time). Colombian Decree 4760 of 2005, December 20, 2005, art. 21.

The government also provided, via decree, that the
Superintendency of Notaries and Records (“Superintendencia del Notariado
y del Registro”) would be charged with coordinating and implementing a
system to cross-reference all records about land extension, ownership, and
possession, and transfers of ownership from various state institutions. This
system of information is supposed to include property registered in connection
with declarations of a risk of imminent displacement or of forced displacement.
The decree, which was issued in 2006, provided that the Superintendency would
start implementing this system within one month of the issuance of the decree. Colombian
Decree 3391 of 2006, art. 4.

However, that did not happen. In January 2008, the
government issued another decree ordering the establishment of twelve Regional
Commissions on Restitution of Assets. Colombian Decree 176 of 2008, January 24,
2008, art. 5. The Commissions are supposed to operate in Bogotá,
Medellín, Sincelejo, Barranquilla, Bucaramanga, Valledupar, Pasto, Cali,
Mocoa, Neiva, Quibdo and Cartagena.

[50]
Presidency of the Republic of Colombia, Arranco Programa de Restitucion de
Bienes, July 10, 2009, http://web.presidencia.gov.co/sp/2009/julio/10/05102009.html
(accessed September 28, 2009).

[51]
As of early 2008, officials from the Superintendency of Notaries and Records
reported that there were only 191 offices to record property in Colombia,
covering only 17 percent of the country’s municipalities.Human
Rights Watch interview with Lida Salazar, Superintendent of Notaries and
Records, February 22, 2008.

Much of the information the offices do have is
insecure. Nearly half of the offices—93 of them according to SNR
officials—still keep all their records only on paper. As a result,
records are vulnerable to manipulation in local offices. In January 2006, for
example, a fire was set in the records offices in Valledupar—a region
where the Northern Block of the paramilitaries exerted control—in an
apparent attempt to destroy records. “Effort to destroy by fire records
of purchase and sale of land in Cesar,” Caracol Radio, January 30, 2006.

In many cases displaced persons had not registered the
land they possessed, or they were forced to sell the land at low prices, so
that it now appears registered under another person’s name.
Paramilitaries have not necessarily kept the land under their own names, but
may instead have used front men, or may have sold it. In addition, state
agencies have been notorious for their mismanagement of land claims. For example,
in 2006 the Inspector General’s Office issued a report finding 37,618
case files at the Colombian Institute of Rural Development (INCODER) involving
adjudication of claims over land that had been stuck with no movement over the
previous two years. Office of the Inspector General, Analysis of the Execution
of the Social Agrarian Reform and the Management of the Colombian Institute of
Rural Development, February 2006, pp.22-23.

There have also been reports that paramilitaries have
infiltrated government agencies and altered land records. “‘Raponazo’ de paramilitares afectó política de
tierras del primer gobierno de Álvaro Uribe,” El Tiempo,
May 27, 2007, http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-3571846 (accessed
November 4, 2009); “Paramilitaries convert public records offices into
military objectives,” El Tiempo, July 29, 2006.

[54]
“Silla vacia? Je, je,” Semana,
http://www.semana.com/noticias-nacion/silla-vacia-je-je/129863.aspx (accessed
October 14, 2009). A recent editorial in El Espectador also expressed concern
over the continued influence of political parties and candidates linked to
paramilitarism in upcoming congressional elections.
“¿Persistirá la Captura del Estado?” (Will the
Capture of the State Persist?), El Espectador, January 17, 2009,
http://www.elespectador.com/opinion/editorial/articulo182626-persistira-captura-del-estado
(accessed January 19, 2009).

[55]
Organization of American States, “Eleventh Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” OEA/Ser.G, CP/doc.4321/08, June 25, 2008, http://www.mapp-oea.org/documentos/informes/Trimestrales%20MAPP/Eleventh_Quarterly_Report.pdf
(accessed September 25, 2009).

[62]
A retired army lieutenant who claims to have worked closely with the BLS and
BCB leadership for several years has claimed that the BLS had even conducted
drug-related business with fronts of the FARC and ELN guerrillas in 2004 and
2005. “The New ‘Ventilator’ of the Paras” (“El
Nuevo ‘ventilador’ para”), Semana (Bogotá),
March 8, 2008, http://www.semana.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=110124
(accessed April 22, 2008). In May 2005, fifteen tons of cocaine were found on
boats in Tumaco marked with symbols of both the FARC and paramilitaries. “Nariño, puerto de coca en el Pacífico”
(“Nariño, coca port in the Pacific”), El Tiempo (Bogotá),
http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-1676593 (accessed October 2,
2009).

[63]
Human Rights Watch interview with a member of the Special Tasks Group (grupo de
tareas especiales), National Unit on Criminal Gangs (Unidad Nacional Contra
Bandas Criminales), July 23, 2009.

[64]
Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, Presidency of the Republic of
Colombia, “Proceso de Paz con las Autodefensas: Informe Ejecutivo”
(Peace Process with the Self-Defense Forces: Executive Report), p.8.

[65]
Organization of American States, “Eighth Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” OEA/Ser.G CP/doc. 4176/07, February 14, 2007, http://www.mapp-oea.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=74
(accessed September 25, 2009), p.3.

[66]
Organization of American States, “Eighth Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” p. 6. It specifically noted that it had verified
cases of rearmament in the states of La Guajira, Cesar, Atlántico, Norte
de Santander, Bolivar, Córdoba, Tolima, Casanare, Caquetá, and
Nariño; and it issued “rearmament alerts” for other groups
apparently operating in Cesar, Magdalena, Sucre, Santander, Antioquia, Meta,
Nariño, and Putumayo. Ibid, pp. 7-11.

In subsequent reports the MAPP has continued to express
concern over the activities and growth of these successor groups. Organization
of American States, “Tenth Quarterly Report of the Secretary General to
the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia,”
OEA/Ser.G, CP/doc.4249/07, October 31, 2007, http://www.mapp-oea.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=22&Itemid=74
(accessed September 25, 2009); “Eleventh Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” OEA/Ser.G, CP/doc.4321/08, June 25, 2008, http://www.mapp-oea.org/documentos/informes/Trimestrales%20MAPP/Eleventh_Quarterly_Report.pdf
(accessed September 25, 2009); “Twelfth Quarterly Report of the Secretary
General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in
Colombia,” OEA/Ser.G, CP/doc.4365/09 corr.1, February 9, 2009, http://www.mapp-oea.org/sites/default/files/images/twelfthquarterlyreport%20mapp.pdf
(accessed August 6, 2009).

A few months later, the National Commission on
Reparations and Reconciliation issued a report that also warned about the
appearance of successor groups, noting that estimates of their members ranged
from 3 to 5 thousand, and calling “on society and the government to
recognize the severity of this situation which threatens with the possibility
of new phenomena of violence in different regions.” National Commission
on Reparation and Reconciliation of Colombia, Area on Demobilization,
Disarmament, and Reintegration, “First Report: Dissidents, Rearmed
Persons, and Emerging Groups: Criminal Gangs or a Third Paramilitary
Generation?” May 2007, http://www.cnrr.org.co/new/interior_otros/informeDDR.pdf
(accessed September 25, 2009), pp. 3, 5.

[67]
In a July 2009 interview, MAPP-OAS representatives told Human Rights Watch that
they estimated the successor groups had between 7,000 and 8,000 members, of
which approximately 4,000 to 4,500 were formerly demobilized paramilitaries. Human
Rights Watch interview with MAPP-OAS representatives, Bogotá, July 17,
2009.

The NGO Indepaz reported in December 2008 that there
were 53 groups in 31 departments, with a presence in 266 municipalities. Indepaz, “Presencia de Grupos Narco-paramilitares en el 2008”
(“Presence of Narco-Paramilitary Groups in 2008”), Punto de
Encuentro No. 52, December 2008, p. 48.

[68]Organization
of American States, “Eleventh Quarterly Report of the Secretary General
to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in
Colombia,” p. 4.

The MAPP reiterated its concern in 2009, noting that
it had observed the “capacity of ‘renewal’ that the illegal
structures have, especially in connection with their commanders, which
constitutes a challenge for authorities not to permit their reorganization or
the resurgence of other leaders.” Organization of American States,
“Thirteenth Quarterly Report of the Secretary General to the Permanent
Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia,”
[official number not available], October 21, 2009, http://www.mapp-oea.org/documentos/informes/XIII%20INFORME%20MAPP09.pdf
(accessed October 30, 2009), p. 8.

[69]
For example, police sources told Human Rights Watch that the Rastrojos had
absorbed the Black Eagles in the department of Norte de Santander and in the
southern region of the department of Bolivar. Similarly, the Alta Guajira group
had been absorbed by the Paisas. Human Rights Watch interview with
representative of the National Police, Bogotá, July 17, 2009.

In a mid-2008 report the MAPP also described the
existence of a “critically affected corridor which starts in Urabá
and runs eastward through the southern part of Córdoba, Bajo Cauca, the
south of Bolivar, Barrancabermeja and several villages, and the southern part
of Ocana, in the municipality of Norte de Santander.” Organization of
American States, “Eleventh Quarterly Report of the Secretary General to
the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace Process in Colombia,”
p. 4.

[72]
Human Rights Watch interview with representative of the Colombian National
Police, Bogotá, July 17, 2009. Human Rights Watch interview with
representatives of the Office of the Attorney General, Bogotá, July 22,
2009.

[73]
“Elmer Cárdenas Block Demobilized,” Office of the High
Commissioner for Peace, Presidency of the Republic of Colombia news release,
August 15, 2006, http://www.altocomisionadoparalapaz.gov.co/noticias/2006/agosto/agosto_15_06.htm
(accessed September 25, 2009).

[114]
“Persecution in the South of Bolivar,” Federación Agrominera
del Sur de Bolívar and others press release, April 14, 2008, http://fedeagromisbol.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=33&Itemid=45
(accessed September 25, 2009). This “escalation in violence”
prompted a statement from several UN experts in which they expressed their deep
concern over the “the deteriorating situation of human rights defenders
in recent months, in particular the killings, harassment and intimidation of
civil society activists, trade-union leaders and lawyers representing
victims.” “‘End Violence Against Defenders in Colombia’
the call of UN experts,” United Nations Office at Geneva press release,
April 30, 2008, http://www.unhchr.ch/huricane/huricane.nsf/view01/3594FDD2EB3D23FFC125743B00576A22?opendocument
(accessed September 25, 2009). The experts were the Special Representative of
the Secretary-General on the situation of human rights defenders, Hina Jilani;
the Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,
Philip Alston; and the Special Rapporteur on the independence of judges and
lawyers, Leandro Despouy.

[116]
The threat, which Human Rights Watch viewed, stated: “After a long and
exhaustive intelligence process that included following and interception of
communications, among other activities, of several organizations in Nariño
that supposedly defend human rights, the Urban Comandos of the Rastrojos have
reached the following conclusions: (1) to call on all these organizations to
set aside the subversive archaic discourse in favor of the rights and
ideologies of the narcoterrorists of the FARC and ELN… or we will go
beyond threats; (2) declare as military objectives [several human rights and
Awa indigenous groups]; (3) Immediately suspend the brainwashing campaign in
which these groups are engaged… We can’t be held responsible for
what may happen to the leaders of those organizations if they enter our
territory.”

[117]
Human Rights Watch interview with “Lucía” (name changed at
the request of the source), March 14, 2009.

[121]
National Labor School, “Chart on Violations against Life, Liberty and
Wellbeing against Trade Unionists: Killings, Threats and Disappearances by
Perpetrator, 2002-2009,” sent by email from National Labor School to
Human Rights Watch, August 26, 2009; E-mail from José Luciano Sanin,
director of the National Labor School, to Human Rights Watch, December 7, 2009.

[131] “Acusan a representante de Fundación creada por
Castaño de crimen de mujer líder de desplazados” (“Representative
of Foundation Created by the Castaños charged with killing of woman
leader of the displaced”), El Tiempo (Bogotá), February 2,
2007, http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/CMS-3422979 (accessed September
27, 2009).

[136]
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, “Report
on the situation of human rights in Colombia 2007,” A/HRC/7/39, February
28, 2008, http://www.hchr.org.co/documentoseinformes/informes/altocomisionado/2007/Report%20High%20Commissioner%20English%20ADVANCE%20EDITION.htm#_ftnref37
(accessed April 30, 2008), para. 50.

[142]Comisión de Seguimiento a la Política Pública
Sobre el Desplazamiento Forzado, “Proceso
Nacional de Verificación de los Derechos de la Población
Desplazadas: Primer Informe a la Corte Constitucional,” January 28, 2008,
pp. 31-32. The same report notes that there is a discrepancy between
this survey and data collected in the official information system about
displaced persons, which attributes only 11.3 percent of cases of displacement
to paramilitaries. The report notes that the reports of displacement caused by
paramilitaries in the official information system have been dropping
“probably because, among other factors, of the difficulties that have
arisen in the process of registration…due to the paramilitary
demobilization process…[because] as has been reported by many organizations…
some Territorial Units (TUs) of Acción Social began to systematically
refuse to register persons and homes who reported that paramilitaries were
responsible for their displacement. According to the reports about the
situation, the TUs were operating on the assumption that the paramilitaries,
having demobilized, could not be accused of having caused the
displacement.” Ibid.

[143]
Presidential Agency for Social Action and International Cooperation, Sole
Registry of the Displaced Population, General Charts of the Displaced population,
cutoff date of November 30, 2009,
http://www.accionsocial.gov.co/Estadisticas/publicacion%20noviembre%20de%202009.htm
(accessed December 29, 2009).

[152]
The most dramatic drop happened between 2002 and 2003, when it fell from a rate
of 184 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants to 98.2 per 100,000. The homicide rate
continued dropping for several years, until it hit a low of 28.6 per 100,000 in
2007. Secretariat of the Municipal Government of Medellín, Common
Homicides in Medellín 1989-2006. The city government claimed that the
reduction in violence was a result of its policies, which included investing
substantial resources in a reintegration program for demobilized individuals,
and the creation of a project to provide psycho-social and legal assistance to
victims. Office of the Mayor of Medellín, Peace and Reconciliation
Program, Sistematización del Programa Paz y
Reconciliación: Modelo de Intervención Regreso a la Legalidad
(Sistematization of the Peace and Reconciliation Program: Return to Legality
Intervention), (Medellín: Office of the Mayor of Medellín, 2007),
pp. 22-67.

Sergio Fajardo, who served as mayor from 2003 to 2007,
also received much praise for investing city resources in schools, libraries,
and parks in a strategy that city officials claimed had moved citizens
“from fear to hope.” María Peña,
“Alcalde Fajardo Vende en Washington el ‘Milagro’ de
Medellín,” EFE.

[156]
Both the Cacique Nutibara and Heroes de Granada paramilitary Blocks were
commanded by Diego Fernando Murillo Bejarano, also known by his aliases of
“Don Berna” or “Adolfo Paz.” The Office of Colombia’s
High Commissioner for Peace has listed final official numbers of demobilized
individuals for each paramilitary Block. Office of the High Commissioner for
Peace of Colombia, “Proceso de Paz con las Autodefensas: Informe
Ejecutivo” (Peace Process with the Self-Defense Forces: Executive Report).

[161]
Human Rights Watch interview with former community leader, December 3, 2007.

[162]
Office of the Attorney General of Colombia, “Postulados a la Ley 975/2005”
(“Applicants to Law 975 of 2005”), online database, http://www.fiscalia.gov.co/justiciapaz/Documentos/Postulados975.pdf
(accessed October 15, 2009).

[198]“Victimas
del BCB Perdieron Espacio para Mostrar su Tragedia” (“Victims of
the BCB Lost Space to Show their Tragedy”), Instituto Popular de
Capacitación (IPC) Press Agency, June 13, 2007, http://www.semana.com/noticias-on-line/victimas-del-bcb-perdieron-espacio-para-mostrar-su-tragedia/104391.aspx
(accessed September 28, 2009); Human Rights Watch interview with Gustavo
Villegas, Secretary of Government of Medellín, Medellín, September
28, 2007.

Something similar happened during the confession of
“Macaco,” according to one official from the Inspector
General’s Office. “Because the plaza was closed, the supporters of
Macaco went to another plaza across the street. They came on a bus and...
supposedly received 100,000 pesos each.” Human Rights Watch interview
with official of the Inspector General’s Office, Medellín, September
2007.

[206]“Fue amenazada de muerte miembro de Misión de la
OEA que verifica desmovilización de los ‘paras’” (“Member
of the OAS mission verifying the demobilization of the ‘paras’
received a death threat”), El Tiempo (Bogotá), December 12,
2007.

Similar information was also reported by the Popular
Institute of Capacitation (Instituto Popular de Capacitacion or IPC), an
organization in Medellín that does research on the city. According to
IPC reports, for several months there was a “high intensity war”
between the Envigado Office and Varela, “who is seeking to take over
control of Medellín, from where he hopes to feed his private armies and
control much of the illicit business surrounding the production,
commercialization and export of cocaine.” The IPC reported several
examples of killings between the two groups, including the death of Fray Martin
Zapata Castaño, a demobilized member of the Heroes de Granada Block who
served as the “social coordinator” of the Democracy Corporation in
Comuna 1, in apparent retaliation for his alleged involvement in an execution.
“Cartel del Norte del Valle, tras la hegemonia armada en
Medellín” (“Norte del Valle Cartel, Behind Armed Hegemony in
Medellín”), IPC Press Agency, November 29, 2007, http://www.ipc.org.co/page/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1130&Itemid=368
(accessed September 28, 2009); Chris Kraul, “Colombian drug lord shot
dead,” Los Angeles Times.

[210]
Naranjo stated that “Rogelio” had “direct control of the
organization that belonged to Don Berna,” and that he was “linked
to three groups: the Office of Envigado, La Union, and La Calatrava. And his
area of activity is running hit men, extortion, and collecting debts.”
Aguilar denied the charges and claimed that Naranjo’s statements and the
transfer of “Don Berna” to another prison were an effort to
“leave the [demobilization] process headless.” “Rogelio niega
ser jefe de banda” (“Rogelio denies being head of gang”), El
Colombiano (Medellín), September 4, 2007; “The Reshaping of
the Envigado Office,” El Espectador (Bogotá), August 4,
2007, http://www.elespectador.com/elespectador/Secciones/Detalles.aspx?idNoticia=13430&idSeccion=22
(accessed January 10, 2008). Gustavo Villegas, then Medellín’s
Secretary of Government, told Human Rights Watch that prosecutors had not
issued an arrest warrant for “Rogelio,” and that the City would
“work with the demobilized until it was told that there was an arrest
warrant for them.” In any case, Villegas also noted, it was not the city
but rather the national government that “at the demobilization signed a
document recognizing the Democracy Corporation as the organization representing
the demobilized.” Human Rights Watch interview with Gustavo Villegas, September
28, 2007.

[231]
Email communication from Luz Patricia Correa Madrigal, General Manager for
Attention to Forced Displacement of the City of Medellín, to Human
Rights Watch, September 23, 2009.

[232]
Letter from José Miguel Vivanco, Americas Director, Human Rights Watch
to the Office of the Attorney General’s Witness Protection Program, June
19, 2009. The Attorney General responded, stating that it was reviewing the
requests, noting that a number of requirements must be met for a witness to
enter the witness protection program, and pointing out that even if a request
were denied, citizens have a right to general protection from the State, which
is ordinarily the Police’s duty to provide “as has happened so far
in the shelter offered to them.” Letter from Attorney General Mario
Iguarán to José Miguel Vivanco, June 30, 2009.

[244]
Yimmy’s case is also briefly described in the US Department of State,
“Memorandum of Justification Concerning Human Rights Conditions with
Respect to Assistance for Colombia’s Armed Forces,” September 8,
2009, p. 75.

[245]
Human Rights Watch interview with former national official who worked in the
plains, Bogotá, March 9, 2009.

[263]
“El Nuevo ‘ventilador’ para” (“The New ‘Ventilator’
of the Paras”), Semana. In May
2005, 15 tons of cocaine were
found on boats in Tumaco marked with symbols
of both the FARC andparamilitaries. “Nariño, puerto de coca en el
Pacífico” (“Nariño, coca port in the
Pacific”), El Tiempo (Bogotá), http://www.eltiempo.com/archivo/documento/MAM-1676593
(accessed October 2, 2009).

[264]
“El Nuevo ‘ventilador’ para” (“The New
‘Ventilator’ of the Paras”), Semana. The witness
speaks of “between 10,000 million and 35,000 million pesos.” Calculated
at an approximate exchange rate of 2,000 pesos to the dollar, approximately 17
million dollars could be at play.

[265]
Office of the High Commissioner for Peace, Presidency of the Republic of
Colombia, “Proceso de Paz con las Autodefensas: Informe Ejecutivo” (Peace
Process with the Self-Defense Forces: Executive Report), p. 42.

[269]
Shortly after the demobilizations ended a variety of successor groups appeared,
using the names “Men in Black,” “Black Hand,”
“New Generation Organization (NGO), and “Rastrojos”;
Ombudsman’s Office of the Republic of Colombia, Early Warning System,
“Informe de Riesgo No. 016-07 (Nariño)” (“Risk Report
No 016-07 (Nariño)”), June 29, 2007. However, Men in Black and
Black Hand appear to have faded, changed names, or joined other groups.

[277]
Organization of American States, “Eighth Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” p.3; International Crisis Group,“Colombia’s
New Armed Groups,” Latin America Report no. 20, May 10, 2007, pp. 12-13.

[278]
Organization of American States, “Eighth Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” pp. 9-10.

[321]
Organization of American States, “Twelfth Quarterly Report of the
Secretary General to the Permanent Council on the Mission to Support the Peace
Process in Colombia,” p. 2.

[322]Office of the UN
High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, “Annual Report on the
Situation of Human Rights in Colombia, 2007,” A/HRC/7/39, February 29,
2008,
http://www.hchr.org.co/documentoseinformes/informes/altocomisionado/2007/Report%20HC%202007%20Advance%20Edited.pdf
(accessed January 24, 2010), para. 94(a).

[323]
Human Rights Watch interview with senior official of the National Police,
Bogotá, July 17, 2009. E-mail communication from former Ministry of
Defense official to Human Rights Watch, received on January 19, 2010.

[324] Office of the United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Colombia, “Annual Report on
the Situation of Human Rights in Colombia, 2007,” para. 40.

[332]
Letter from Col. Ricardo Alberto Restrepo Londoño, Director of
Carabineers and Rural Security of the National Police of Colombia, to Human
Rights Watch, September 9, 2009. The letter states that Directive No. 019 of
April 16,2009, issued by the Police’s Planning Office, delegates
responsibility for combating the “criminal gangs” to the
Carabineers Directorate.

[341] Memorandum from Mesa Técnica de Conteo Bandas Criminales No.
9, Bogotá, June 29, 2009, Conclusions. The high number of
reported killings of new group members by the Army is particularly disturbing
and raises questions in light of the scandals over widespread extrajudicial
executions of civilians by the Army.

[385]
National Commission on Reparation and Reconciliation, “Versiones Libres
Programadas,” http://www.cnrr.org.co/new09/vjr/veresta.html (accessed
October 14, 2009). The Commission reports that 219,818 victims had registered
as such as of May 31, 2009.

[386]
The Justice and Peace Law provides that the State must “guarantee the
access of victims to the administration of justice.” Law 975 of 2005,
art. 37. It also states that state officials must “adopt the adequate
measures and all appropriate actions to protect the security… well-being,
dignity, and private life of victims and witnesses.” Ibid., art. 38.
However, several specific provisions of the law in fact restricted
victims’ rights to fully participate in the proceedings. Accordingly, the
Constitutional Court modified many of them in its ruling to ensure that victims
would have a right to be heard, to access information in case files, to present
evidence, and generally to participate in every part of the legal proceedings
involving their cases. Constitutional Court of Colombia,
DecisionNo. C-370 of 2006, section 6.2.3.2.1.

[387]Administrative Tribunal of Cundinamarca (Tribunal de lo Contencioso
Administrativo de Cundinamarca), Case No. A.T. 25000-23-15-000-2007-00876-01,
August 13, 2007. The lawsuit was filed in July 2007. Patricia
Buriticá, one of the commissioners on the National Commission on
Reparations and Reconciliation and head of the organization Women’s
Initiative for Peace, filed the appeal on behalf of 12 women victims of
paramilitary groups.

[392]
Statements by Carlos Franco, Director of the Presidential Program on Human
Rights of Colombia, at a meeting with US-based human rights groups at the
Colombian Embassy in the United States, Washington, DC, November 6, 2009.